Rinck Mike, Becker Eni S
Dresden University of Technology, Germany.
J Abnorm Psychol. 2006 May;115(2):231-8. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.115.2.231.
According to cognitive models of anxiety, anxiety patients exhibit an early reflexive attentional bias toward threat stimuli, which may be followed by intentional avoidance of these stimuli. To determine the time course of attentional vigilance and avoidance, the authors conducted an eye-tracking study in which 22 highly spider fearful participants (SFs) and 23 nonanxious control participants (NACs) studied groups of 4 pictures (spider, butterfly, dog, and cat). The authors found that the very first fixation was on a spider picture more often in SFs than in NACs. However, SFs quickly moved their eyes away from the spider they had fixated first, yielding shorter gaze durations than NACs. Afterward, SFs exhibited shorter gaze durations on spiders than NACs for the rest of the 1-min presentation time. This early reflexive attentional bias toward threat followed by avoidance of threat may explain earlier failures to find attentional biases in anxiety.
根据焦虑的认知模型，焦虑症患者对威胁刺激表现出早期的反射性注意偏向，随后可能会有意回避这些刺激。为了确定注意力警觉和回避的时间进程，作者进行了一项眼动追踪研究，其中22名高度害怕蜘蛛的参与者（SFs）和23名非焦虑对照参与者（NACs）研究了4张图片（蜘蛛、蝴蝶、狗和猫）的组图。作者发现，SFs比NACs更频繁地将最初的注视点放在蜘蛛图片上。然而，SFs很快将目光从他们最初注视的蜘蛛上移开，注视持续时间比NACs短。之后，在1分钟的呈现时间内，SFs在蜘蛛图片上的注视持续时间比NACs短。这种对威胁的早期反射性注意偏向随后是对威胁的回避，可能解释了早期在焦虑症中未能发现注意偏向的原因。
