A comprehensive look at phobic fear in inhibition of return: Phobia-related spiders as cues and targets

Berdica, Elisa; Gerdes, Antje B. M.; Alpers, Georg W.

doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2016.07.013

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In particular, a wealth of studies have shown that threatening information attracts attention. Various kinds of threatening stimuli, such as angry faces 3,4 , dangerous animals [5][6][7] , and violent situations 8 , have been included in these studies. Recent evidence has revealed that the automatic processing of threatening information is inherent.…”

Section: The Priority Of Goal-relevant Information and Evolutionarilymentioning

confidence: 99%

The priority of goal-relevant information and evolutionarily threatening information in early attention processing:Evidence from behavioral and ERP study

Liu

Wang

2020

Sci Rep

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Previous studies have demonstrated that evolutionarily threatening information and goal-relevant information can both capture attention. However, some studies have suggested that goal-relevant information is prioritized over evolutionarily threatening information, while some studies have shown the opposite conclusion. The aim of the present study was to investigate the attention advantage by presenting evolutionarily threatening information and goal-relevant information simultaneously. Three conditions were presented in this study: evolutionarily threatening information + an irrelevant stimulus, goal-relevant information + an irrelevant stimulus, and evolutionarily threatening information + goal-relevant information. The behavioral results showed no attentional bias toward evolutionarily threatening information in the two conditions including evolutionarily threatening information; in the two conditions including goal-relevant information, participants showed attentional bias toward goal-relevant information in both. However, the ERP results showed that in the two conditions including evolutionarily threatening information, a significantly stronger N2pc response was seen for evolutionarily threatening information than for the other types of pictures, and goal-relevant information produced a significantly stronger N2pc response than that for an irrelevant stimulus. The abovementioned results indicated that in the earlier stage of attention, both evolutionarily threatening information and goal-relevant information have attention processing advantages over irrelevant stimuli; furthermore, attention was captured by evolutionarily threatening information faster than it was by goal-relevant information.

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Section: The Priority Of Goal-relevant Information and Evolutionarilymentioning

confidence: 99%

The priority of goal-relevant information and evolutionarily threatening information in early attention processing:Evidence from behavioral and ERP study

Liu

Wang

2020

Sci Rep

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“…Indeed, compelling evidence indicates that fear-related animals are preferentially processed ( Macleod and Mathews, 1988 ), which manifests itself in eye-tracking research as longer fixation durations or as greater skin conductance responses compared to neutral stimuli ( Gerdes et al, 2008 , 2009a ; Wiemer et al, 2013 ). Still, the stimuli used in such studies are typically very diverse, e.g., potentially threatening animals like snakes, spiders, insects ( Lipp, 2006 ; Rinck and Becker, 2006 ; Gerdes et al, 2008 , 2009b ; Weymar et al, 2013 ; Berdica et al, 2014 , 2017 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threat vs. Threat: Attention to Fear-Related Animals and Threatening Faces

et al. 2018

Self Cite

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It is generally thought to be adaptive that fear relevant stimuli in the environment can capture and hold our attention; and in psychopathology attentional allocation is thought to be cue-specific. Such hypervigilance toward threatening cues or difficulty to disengage attention from threat has been demonstrated for a variety of stimuli, for example, toward evolutionary prepared animals or toward socially relevant facial expressions. Usually, specific stimuli have been examined in individuals with particular fears (e.g., animals in animal fearful and faces in socially fearful participants). However, different kinds of stimuli are rarely examined in one study. Thus, it is unknown how different categories of threatening stimuli compete for attention and how specific kinds of fears modulate these attentional processes. In this study, we used a free viewing paradigm: pairs of pictures with threat-related content (spiders or angry faces) or neutral content (butterflies or neutral faces) were presented side by side (i.e., spiders and angry faces, angry and neutral faces, spiders and butterflies, butterflies and neutral faces). Eye-movements were recorded while spider fearful, socially anxious, or non-anxious participants viewed the picture pairs. Results generally replicate the finding that unpleasant pictures more effectively capture attention in the beginning of a trial compared to neutral pictures. This effect was more pronounced in spider fearful participants: the higher the fear the quicker they were in looking at spiders. This was not the case for high socially anxious participants and pictures of angry faces. Interestingly, when presented next to each other, there was no preference in initial orientation for either spiders or angry faces. However, neutral faces were looked at more quickly than butterflies. Regarding sustained attention, we found no general preference for unpleasant pictures compared to neutral pictures.

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“…4. The variables to be measured are a selection of the variables presented in previous research [23,24], which are listed below:…”

Section: Specialist Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative Treatment of Psychological Disorders Such as Spider Phobia Through Virtual Reality Environments

Armas

Andaluz

2018

Advances in Visual Computing

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This article proposes a tool to support the psychotherapist in the process of treating spider phobia through a system that combines both software and hardware elements to present immersive virtual reality environments to the treated patient. To create the feeling of immersion, environments and models created in Unity are used in conjunction with the patient's movement tracked through the Kinect motion sensor. For the development of the system, the psychotherapeutic treatment method of systematic desensitization is used, so that the patient can overcome his fear and present non-phobic interactions with spiders. The process of developing the system and redacting this document was supported and supervised by a psychologist specialized in the treatment of phobias. Finally, tests were performed to obtain feedback from specialists and potential patients with a medium degree of phobia, in which the results were very positive and satisfactory.

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A comprehensive look at phobic fear in inhibition of return: Phobia-related spiders as cues and targets

Cited by 9 publications

References 33 publications

The priority of goal-relevant information and evolutionarily threatening information in early attention processing:Evidence from behavioral and ERP study

The priority of goal-relevant information and evolutionarily threatening information in early attention processing:Evidence from behavioral and ERP study

Threat vs. Threat: Attention to Fear-Related Animals and Threatening Faces

Alternative Treatment of Psychological Disorders Such as Spider Phobia Through Virtual Reality Environments

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