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Humans have evolved to seek the proximity of attachment figures during times of threat in order to obtain a sense of safety. In this context, we examined whether or not the voice of an intimate partner (termed "attachment voice") could reduce fear‐learning of conditioned stimuli (CS+) and enhance learning of safety signals (CS−). Although the ability to learn safety signals is vital for human survival, few studies have explored how attachment voices affect safety learning. To test our hypothesis, we recruited thirty‐five young couples and performed a classic Pavlovian conditioning experiment, recording behavioral and electroencephalographic (EEG) data. The results showed that compared with a stranger's voice, the voices of the partners reduced expectancy of the unconditioned stimulus (a shock) during fear‐conditioning, as well as the magnitude of P2 event‐related potentials within the EEG responses, provided the voices were safety signals. Additionally, behavioral and EEG responses to the CS+ and CS− differed more when the participants heard their partner's voice than when they heard the stranger's voice. Thus, attachment voices, even as pure vowel sounds without any semantic information, enhanced acquisition of conditioned safety (CS−). These findings may provide implications for investigating other new techniques to improve clinical treatments for fear‐ and anxiety‐related disorders and for psychological interventions against the mental health effects of the public health emergency. Impact StatementThe contents of this page will be shown on the eTOC on the online version only. It will not be published as part of the article PDF. Our study provides the first evidence that attachment voice (the simple vowel from male partner) promotes safety learning with behavioral and EEG data. Our findings have implications for psychological interventions against the mental health effects of a public health emergency. Our results inform development of new techniques to enrich our understanding of clinical treatments for some anxiety disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion about relationship between prime and target has contributed to the mechanism of priming effect and object recognition. Nevertheless, the role of relationship between mask and target in those cognitive processes remains unquestioned. In the present study, we aim to investigate how mask-target hierarchical relationship may affect word priming and familiarity, by using the masked repetition paradigm and manipulating three hierarchical relationship between mask and target. It is hypothesized that a closer hierarchical relationship between mask and target is associated with a higher mask target similarity, and thereby it leads to a worse recognition performance. Our behavioral results do not support this hypothesis by showing no effect of mask target hierarchical relationship on response time (RT) and accuracy. Event-related potentials (ERPs) indicated that highly similar mask-target triggered (i.e., the subordinate-subordinate-subordinate trials) larger N1 amplitudes, suggesting that it requires more cognitive resource to discriminate the stimuli. In addition, trials with highly similar mask-target hierarchical relationship induced smaller P2 (150–250 ms) and larger mid-frontal FN400 amplitudes than do trials with low mask-target similarity (i.e., the subordinate-basic-subordinate and the subordinate-superordinate-subordinate trials). Our results suggested that the similarity between mask and target may impede conceptual fluency to reduce word priming and familiarity effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]