The effect of unusualness on the functional field of view in unsafe scenes^*

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of unusualness of visually presented unsafe items on the functional field of view. In each experiment, after presenting a word indicating a certain context, we presented a picture including a safe or unsafe daily-life item. Participants were asked to identify a target digit that was briefly presented at the periphery immediately after the picture disappeared. Unusualness was manipulated by varying the incongruency between the item and the word, irrespective of the unsafety of the item. The affective habituation was controlled by using between-participants (Experiment 1) and within-block designs (Experiment 2) for the unsafety manipulation. Target identification accuracy was impaired by the incongruency when the items were unsafe, but this impairment was removed by the affective habituation. These results suggest that unusualness and unsafety have a role in the shrinkage of the functional field of view.