Coelho Carlos M, Suttiwan Panrapee, Faiz Abul M, Ferreira-Santos Fernando, Zsido Andras N
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Department of Psychology, Dev Care Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Front Psychol. 2019 Sep 11;10:2094. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02094. eCollection 2019.
Since Seligman (1971) statement that the vast majority of phobias are about objects essential to the survival of a species, a multitude of laboratory studies followed, supporting the finding that humans learn to fear and detect snakes (and other animals) faster than other stimuli. Most of these studies used schematic drawings, images, or pictures of snakes, and only a small amount of fieldwork in naturalistic environments was done. We address fear preparedness theories and automatic fast detection data from mainstream laboratory data and compare it with ethobehavioral information relative to snakes, predator-prey interaction, and snakes' defensive kinematics strikes in order to analyze their potential matching. From this analysis, four main findings arose, namely that (1) snakebites occur when people are very close to the snake and are unaware or unable to escape the bite; (2) human visual detection and escape response is slow compared to the speed of snake strikes; (3) in natural environments, snake experts are often unable to see snakes existing nearby; (4) animate objects in general capture more attention over other stimuli and dangerous, but recent objects in evolutionary terms are also able to be detected fast. The issues mentioned above pose several challenges to evolutionary psychology-based theories expecting to find special-purpose neural modules. The older selective habituation hypothesis (Schleidt, 1961) that prey animals start with a rather general predator image from which specific harmless cues are removed by habituation might deserve reconsideration.
自塞利格曼（1971年）指出绝大多数恐惧症都与物种生存所必需的物体有关以来，随后进行了大量的实验室研究，支持了人类比其他刺激更快地学会恐惧和察觉蛇（及其他动物）这一发现。这些研究大多使用蛇的示意图、图像或图片，仅在自然环境中进行了少量实地考察。我们探讨恐惧准备理论和来自主流实验室数据的自动快速察觉数据，并将其与关于蛇、捕食者与猎物相互作用以及蛇的防御性运动攻击的行为生态学信息进行比较，以分析它们潜在的匹配情况。通过这一分析，得出了四个主要发现，即：（1）当人们非常靠近蛇且未意识到或无法躲避咬伤时，就会发生蛇咬；（2）与蛇的攻击速度相比，人类的视觉察觉和逃避反应较慢；（3）在自然环境中，蛇类专家常常无法看到附近存在的蛇；（4）一般来说，有生命的物体比其他刺激更能吸引注意力，而且从进化角度来看，近期出现的物体也能被快速察觉。上述问题给基于进化心理学的理论带来了若干挑战，这些理论期望找到特殊用途的神经模块。较早期的选择性习惯化假说（施莱特，1961年）认为，猎物动物最初有一个相当宽泛的捕食者形象，通过习惯化去除其中特定的无害线索，这一假说或许值得重新审视。
