Some animal specific fears are more specific than others: Evidence from attention and emotion measures

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Abstract

Using a visual search methodology we investigated the effect of feared animal stimuli on attention. Our results confirmed the important role of emotion on attention. All participants detected fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) faster than neutral (mushrooms) ones against a background of fruits. In addition, spider fearful participants were sensitized specifically to detect their feared stimulus (spiders), compared to their fear-relevant but non-feared (snakes) and neutral stimuli. However, for participants fearful of snakes there was no significant difference in detection latencies between the feared (snakes) and the fear-relevant but non-feared animal stimuli (spiders). The results from the attention task were mirrored in the emotional ratings, which showed that spider fear was highly specific, whereas snake fear was associated with a more generalized enhanced evaluation of all negative stimuli.

Section snippets

Participants

Sixty female individuals, ranging in age from 18 to 38 years (M = 23.63; SD = 6.05), participated in the experiment. All participants had a high school degree and were students at the Superior Institute of Leiria, Portugal, where they were recruited in classes at several departments. Participants were selected from 281 individuals according to their scores on a Portuguese version of the Snake Phobia (SNAQ) and Spider Phobia (SPQ) questionnaires (Klorman, Weerts, Hastings, Melamed, & Lang, 1974

Reaction time data

The analysis showed that, overall, participants were significantly faster in detecting fear-relevant (i.e., spiders and snakes) than neutral target stimuli (i.e., mushrooms), F (2, 114) = 337.4, p < .0001, ηp2 = .86. A post hoc Tukey test revealed significant differences in detection latencies between all the three types of stimulus, with spider targets being detected faster, followed by snake and mushroom targets (see Table 1).

As shown in Fig. 2, this advantage was stable across the displays

Discussion

In the present study we examined two basic hypotheses: (a) fear-relevant stimuli have a processing advantage in relation to neutral, non-fear-relevant stimuli, and (b) this advantage is enhanced in individuals who report high fear of such stimuli. Using a visual search procedure, participants searched for a discrepant picture that could either be fear-relevant (snake or spider) or neutral (mushroom) in displays with a constant neutral background (fruits). The results provided at least partial

Acknowledgments

Sandra Soares was supported by grant SFRH/19513/2004 from the Foundation of Science and Technology, from the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education to pursue her Ph.D studies at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. This grant was co-financed by The Operational Program of Science and Innovation 2010 and the European Social Funding. The research was supported by an award as a Leading Scientist to Arne Öhman from the Swedish Research Council, and by a grant to Arne

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