Hishiya Ryo, Ishihara Masami
Department of Human Sciences [Psychology], Tokyo Metropolitan University, 1-1 Minami-Osawa, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo, 192-0397, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2024 Dec 4;14(1):30258. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-81592-8.
The possibility that risks interact with spatial information (such as the SNARC effect) has been explored but studies did not demonstrate a consistent left-to-right representation of risks. This is probably due to the perception of risk being different in each individual experience. The present study aimed to clarify the spatial characteristics of acute deterioration risks perceived from illnesses. Registered nurses and general students participated in the present experiment. They were instructed to judge, by pressing one of the left/right response buttons, whether the risk of a given target (illness name) presented on a computer screen was higher or lower compared to that of a standard stimulus. Reaction times to the target were measured. No spatial-risk association was observed in the comprehensive analysis, but further inspection revealed that approximately half of the participants have a left-to-right representation and the other half have a right-to-left representation. Moreover, participants' responses appeared to be faster when the target was representationally farther away from the standard stimulus (i.e., distance effect). These findings therefore suggest a spatially aligned magnitude representation of acute deterioration risk (i.e., mental risk line) but this horizontal risk orientation is likely to be dichotomous depending on the individuals and/or given situations.
风险与空间信息（如SNARC效应）相互作用的可能性已得到探讨，但研究并未证明风险存在一致的从左到右的表征。这可能是由于每个人对风险的感知不同。本研究旨在阐明从疾病中感知到的急性恶化风险的空间特征。注册护士和普通学生参与了本实验。他们被要求通过按下左/右响应按钮之一，判断计算机屏幕上呈现的给定目标（疾病名称）的风险与标准刺激相比是更高还是更低。测量对目标的反应时间。在综合分析中未观察到空间-风险关联，但进一步检查发现，大约一半的参与者有从左到右的表征，另一半有从右到左的表征。此外，当目标在表征上远离标准刺激时（即距离效应），参与者的反应似乎更快。因此，这些发现表明急性恶化风险存在空间对齐的量级表征（即心理风险线），但这种水平风险取向可能因个体和/或给定情况而异，呈二分法。
