Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Behav Res Ther. 2010 Nov;48(11):1150-4. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2010.07.013. Epub 2010 Aug 5.
Attentional bias to threat is well established, however, the influence of spatial predictability on this attentional bias has never been investigated. Here we investigated how threat affects attentional capture and disengagement when its spatial location is predictable. Using a visual search paradigm, participants were required to identify a target inside one of a variable number of colored circles. One color (Conditioned Stimulus, CS+) was fear-conditioned using an electrocutaneous stimulus at tolerance level. In the experimental group the CS+ was made spatially predictable (occurred more often at one location in the visual display), while this was not the case in the control group. Results showed no complete automatic capture of attention by the CS+, but the experimental group did show more prioritization of the CS+ and less difficulty to disengage from the CS+ than the control group. Of further importance was the finding that the experimental group also attended to the location that was predictive of the CS+, even when no CS+ was presented. Findings are discussed in terms the effects of predictability on anxiety.
注意偏向于威胁是既定的，然而，空间可预测性对这种注意偏向的影响从未被研究过。在这里，我们研究了当威胁的空间位置可预测时，它如何影响注意力的捕获和脱离。使用视觉搜索范式，要求参与者在可变数量的彩色圆圈中识别一个目标。一种颜色（条件刺激，CS+）通过在耐受水平的电刺激进行恐惧条件反射。在实验组中，CS+的空间是可预测的（在视觉显示的一个位置出现的频率更高），而对照组则不是这样。结果表明，CS+并没有完全自动地吸引注意力，但实验组确实比对照组更优先注意 CS+，并且更难以从 CS+中脱离。更重要的是，研究结果发现，即使没有 CS+出现，实验组也会注意到可预测 CS+的位置。研究结果从可预测性对焦虑的影响方面进行了讨论。
