Initial Orienting Towards Sexually Relevant Stimuli: Preliminary Evidence from Eye Movement Measures

Abstract

It has been proposed that sexual stimuli will be processed in a comparable manner to other evolutionarily meaningful stimuli (such as spiders or snakes) and therefore elicit an attentional bias and more attentional engagement (Spiering and Everaerd, In E. Janssen (Ed.), The psychophysiology of sex (pp. 166–183). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). To investigate early and late attentional processes while looking at sexual stimuli, heterosexual men (n = 12) viewed pairs of sexually preferred (images of women) and sexually non-preferred images (images of girls, boys or men), while eye movements were measured. Early attentional processing (initial orienting) was assessed by the number of first fixations and late attentional processing (maintenance of attention) was assessed by relative fixation time. Results showed that relative fixation time was significantly longer for sexually preferred stimuli than for sexually non-preferred stimuli. Furthermore, the first fixation was more often directed towards the preferred sexual stimulus, when simultaneously presented with a non-sexually preferred stimulus. Thus, the current study showed for the first time an attentional bias to sexually relevant stimuli when presented simultaneously with sexually irrelevant pictures. This finding, along with the discovery that heterosexual men maintained their attention to sexually relevant stimuli, highlights the importance of investigating early and late attentional processes while viewing sexual stimuli. Furthermore, the current study showed that sexually relevant stimuli are favored by the human attentional system.

Exploring the Relationship between Sexual Compulsivity and Attentional Bias to Sex-Related Words in a Cohort of Sexually Active Individuals

“…Recent evidence has also suggested that sexual stimuli may act to elicit attentional bias responses. In a study using eye-tracking technology in males, Fromberger, Herder, Steinkrauss, Nemetschek, Stolpmann, Müller and Leo showed that heterosexual men demonstrated increased fixation times (maintenance of attention) and direction of first fixation (initial orienting of attention) when viewing sexually preferred images [30] . Other work using the dot-probe task to index attentional preference in heterosexual males and females showed a pattern of failure to disengage from sexrelated pictures and no initial orienting effects [31] .…”

Gaze patterns to child figures reflect deviant sexual preference in child sex offenders—a first glance

“…Research has revealed a gender difference in gaze strategies to erotic and non-erotic images, with heterosexual men demonstrating a strong preference for viewing opposite sex figures (Lykins et al, 2008;Rupp & Wallen, 2007;Nummenmaa, Hietanen, Santiila, & Hyönä, 2012) , and specifically looking more at nude females chests (Nummenmaa et al, 2012). For men, this bias could start at the early stage of visual processing, with Fromberger et al (2012a) demonstrating that when paired with non-preferred figures (girls, boys or men) heterosexual men dedicated the first fixation towards sexually preferred (adult women) and viewed these figures for longer than the non-preferred figures.…”

Development of a Cued Pro- and Antisaccade Paradigm: An Indirect Measure to Explore Automatic Components of Sexual Interest

“…Eye movement data from different studies substantiate the preferred processing of female over male stimuli (e.g. Bradley et al, 2015;Dawson & Chivers, 2016;Fromberger et al, 2012) that might have resulted in a motivational benefit for prosaccades towards female stimuli in the CPAP. In addition, intentional mechanisms might have further hampered saccade generation.…”

“…In comparison with studies measuring first fixations as indicator of attention towards sexual information (e.g. Fromberger et al, 2012), saccades should indicate even earlier stages of attention allocation as they precede a first fixation.…”

“…While participants predominately looked at the face of stimuli rated in the loveeliciting condition, they fixated comparatively more often body parts of stimuli in the lusteliciting condition. In addition, other eye tracking studies revealed that eye movement data, for example on pupil dilation or gaze time, differed between sexually relevant and irrelevant stimulus material (e.g., Attard-Johnson, Bindemann, & Ciardha, 2016;Bradley, Costa, & Lang, 2015;Dawson & Chivers, 2016;Fromberger et al, 2012;. Dawson and Chivers (2016) suggested that these findings imply sexual interest-specific allocation of attention that influences 4 sexual information processing as well as behavioral reactions both at an automatic and an intentional level.…”