Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion, School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia.
Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion, School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia.
Behav Res Ther. 2017 Dec;99:117-123. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2017.10.004. Epub 2017 Oct 13.
Researchers have proposed that high spider-fearful individuals are characterised by heightened attentional vigilance to spider stimuli, as compared to low spider-fearful individuals. However, these findings have arisen from methodologies that have uniformly employed only static stimuli. Such findings do not inform upon the patterns of fear-linked attentional selectivity that occur in the face of moving feared stimuli. Hence, the present study developed a novel methodology designed to examine the influence of stimulus movement on attentional vigilance to spider and non-spider stimuli. Eighty participants who varied in level of spider-fear completed an attentional-probe task that presented stimuli under two conditions. One condition presented stimuli that displayed an approaching movement, while the other condition presented stimuli that displayed a receding movement. Fear-linked heightened attentional vigilance was observed exclusively under the latter condition. These findings suggest that fear-linked attentional vigilance to spider stimuli does not represent a uniform characteristic of heightened spider-fear, but rather is influenced by stimulus context. The means by which these findings inform understanding of attentional mechanisms that characterise heightened spider-fear, and avenues for future research, are discussed.
研究人员提出，与低蜘蛛恐惧个体相比，高蜘蛛恐惧个体的特点是对蜘蛛刺激的注意力警觉性更高。然而，这些发现源于使用统一的静态刺激的方法。这些发现并不能说明在面对移动的恐惧刺激时，与恐惧相关的注意力选择性的模式。因此，本研究开发了一种新的方法学，旨在检查刺激运动对蜘蛛和非蜘蛛刺激的注意力警觉性的影响。80 名蜘蛛恐惧程度不同的参与者完成了一项注意力探测任务，该任务在两种条件下呈现刺激。一种条件下呈现的刺激显示出接近的运动，而另一种条件下呈现的刺激显示出后退的运动。仅在后一种条件下观察到与恐惧相关的注意力警觉性增强。这些发现表明，对蜘蛛刺激的与恐惧相关的注意力警觉性并不是高度蜘蛛恐惧的一个统一特征，而是受到刺激环境的影响。讨论了这些发现如何为理解高度蜘蛛恐惧的注意力机制提供信息，以及未来研究的途径。
