Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2021 Dec;73:101670. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2021.101670. Epub 2021 Jun 16.
Previous studies have shown that humans, particularly those with high levels of spider fear, show automatic avoidance of spiders. However, most tasks used in these studies employ symbolic approach-avoidance movements instead of naturalistic movements.
The current study employed a touchscreen-based approach-avoidance task in which 86 female participants made hand and arm movements that mimic the real-life touching, grasping, and moving of spiders. Using a large touchscreen, they had to reach for pictures of spiders and neutral objects (leaves), touch them, and drag them either away from themselves or towards themselves. To draw attention to stimulus content, pictures of butterflies were used in additional NoGo trials, they required participants to not move their hand.
Avoidance of spiders was observed in both the pre-movement times (time to lift the hand from a starting position) and the grabbing times (time to reach the picture), and this avoidance was larger for more spider-fearful participants. The dragging times (time to swipe the picture), however, revealed a relative spider-approach tendency: Compared to leaves, participants were faster to drag spiders closer than to swipe them away.
We discuss potential reasons for this mixed pattern of results, including the low reliability of the dragging times.
We recommend the use of touchscreens for the assessment of approach-avoidance tendencies, and we suggest avenues for further research.
先前的研究表明，人类，尤其是那些对蜘蛛有高度恐惧的人，会对蜘蛛表现出自动回避行为。然而，这些研究中使用的大多数任务采用的是象征性的趋近-回避动作，而不是自然主义的动作。
本研究采用基于触摸屏的趋近-回避任务，其中 86 名女性参与者做出模仿现实生活中触摸、抓取和移动蜘蛛的手部和手臂动作。她们使用一个大的触摸屏，必须伸手去触摸蜘蛛和中性物体（树叶）的图片，并将它们拖向自己或远离自己。为了引起对刺激内容的注意，在额外的 NoGo 试验中使用了蝴蝶的图片，要求参与者不要移动他们的手。
在手部抬起的起始位置前的时间（抬手时间）和抓取时间（伸手够图片的时间）都观察到了对蜘蛛的回避，而对蜘蛛更恐惧的参与者的回避程度更大。然而，拖拽时间（滑动图片的时间）则显示出一种相对的趋近蜘蛛的倾向：与树叶相比，参与者更快地将蜘蛛拉近，而不是将其扫开。
我们讨论了这种混合结果模式的潜在原因，包括拖拽时间的可靠性较低。
我们建议使用触摸屏来评估趋近-回避倾向，我们还提出了进一步研究的途径。
