Li Yadan, Ma Wenjuan, Kang Qin, Qiao Lei, Tang Dandan, Qiu Jiang, Zhang Qinglin, Li Hong
Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, PR China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China.
China Mobile Group Yunnan Company Limited, Baoshan 678000, PR China.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2015 Jul;97(1):46-57. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.04.021. Epub 2015 May 7.
Nighttime fear is a phenomenon in which people feel more afraid of threats at night. Despite the vast amount of psychological research on nighttime fear, previous researchers have not accurately distinguished between "night" and "darkness", both of which play important roles in nighttime fear. We collected physiological (skin conductance response and heart rate) and psychological (self-report) data simultaneously to investigate the effects of "night" and "darkness" on fearful feelings and whether these effects were moderated by the mode of stimulus delivery (i.e., visual or auditory). Specifically, two tasks were employed in which time (day vs. night), illumination (light vs. darkness) and stimulus type (fearful vs. neutral) were manipulated. Participants (n=128) were exposed to visual and auditory oddball tasks consisting of fearful and neutral stimuli. The results indicated that there were significant increases in fear responses at night, and the difference between day and night was significant for fear stimuli but not for neutral events. Furthermore, these effects were consistent over different sensory modalities (visual and auditory). The results of this study underscore the importance of the day-night cycle in fear-related information processing and suggest that further attention needs to be paid to the influence of the biological circadian rhythm on these processes. The current findings could inform a deeper understanding of anxiety and fear-related disorders, and thus, we invite future studies to illuminate the underlying neurobiological mechanisms therein.
夜间恐惧是一种人们在夜间会对威胁感到更加恐惧的现象。尽管对夜间恐惧已有大量心理学研究，但以往的研究者并未准确区分“夜晚”和“黑暗”，而这两者在夜间恐惧中都起着重要作用。我们同时收集了生理数据（皮肤电反应和心率）和心理数据（自我报告），以研究“夜晚”和“黑暗”对恐惧情绪的影响，以及这些影响是否会因刺激呈现方式（即视觉或听觉）而有所不同。具体而言，我们采用了两项任务，对时间（白天与夜晚）、光照（明亮与黑暗）和刺激类型（恐惧与中性）进行了操控。128名参与者接受了由恐惧和中性刺激组成的视觉和听觉oddball任务。结果表明，夜间的恐惧反应显著增加，且白天和夜晚在恐惧刺激方面的差异显著，但在中性事件方面差异不显著。此外，这些影响在不同的感觉模态（视觉和听觉）中是一致的。本研究结果强调了昼夜节律在恐惧相关信息处理中的重要性，并表明需要进一步关注生物昼夜节律对这些过程的影响。目前的研究结果有助于更深入地理解焦虑和恐惧相关障碍，因此，我们邀请未来的研究来阐明其中潜在的神经生物学机制。
