School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, Scotland, UK.
J Anxiety Disord. 2010 Jan;24(1):42-8. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2009.08.005.
The present experiment examines the effect of fear on efficiency of three attention networks: executive attention, orienting and alerting, in a healthy female sample. International Affective Picture System (IAPS) images were used to elicit both a fear response and a non-emotional response in 100 participants. During the emotion manipulation, participants performed a modified version of the Attention Network Test (ANT). Results showed enhanced executive attention in the fear condition compared to the control condition. Specifically, during a fear experience participants were better able to inhibit irrelevant information resulting in faster response times to a target. There was no effect of fear on orienting while the effect of fear on alerting was inconclusive. It is suggested that enhanced executive attention in fear-eliciting situations may function to focus attention on a potentially threat-related target, thus facilitating subsequent rapid responding.
本实验考察了恐惧对健康女性样本中三种注意网络（执行注意、定向注意和警觉注意）效率的影响。国际情绪图片系统（IAPS）图像被用于在 100 名参与者中引起恐惧反应和非情绪反应。在情绪操作过程中，参与者进行了注意力网络测试（ANT）的修改版。结果表明，与对照条件相比，恐惧条件下的执行注意力增强。具体来说，在恐惧体验期间，参与者能够更好地抑制不相关信息，从而使对目标的反应时间更快。恐惧对定向没有影响，而恐惧对警觉的影响尚无定论。研究表明，在引起恐惧的情况下，执行注意力的增强可能有助于将注意力集中在与潜在威胁相关的目标上，从而促进随后的快速反应。
