No attentional bias for pictoral stimuli in spider-fearful subjects

Abstract

A number of experiments have shown that (spider) fearful subjects direct their attention to fear-relevant words, even when these words are irrelevant to the completion of a target task (e.g., color naming

Attentional Interference Effects of Emotional Pictures: Threat, Negativity, or Arousal?

“…Sexual stimuli produced a strong effect that matches the effect of strong unpleasant pictures (Buodo et al, 2002). In contrast, evolutionary threat pictures had a much weaker effect that failed to reach significance in the present studies (Merckelbach et al, 1993). Subsequently, I discuss the implications of the results for the three major theories of emotional influences on attention and for process models of emotions.…”

“…First, evolutionary threat pictures failed to be significantly different from neutral pictures. It is important to note that several other studies with similar stimuli (snakes or spiders) have failed to find significant differences between neutral and evolutionary threat stimuli (Kindt & Brosschot, 1999;Merckelbach et al, 1993). Other studies have found differences between neutral and evolutionary threat stimuli of the same magnitude (ϳ20 ms), and the difference was significant because of larger power (e.g., Thorpe & Salkovskis, 1998).…”

“…For example, Constantine et al (2001) used a pictorial version of the emotional Stroop task and found that both snakes and bunnies produced longer response latencies than cow pictures, and there was no significant difference between snakes and bunnies. Other studies also failed to find evidence that pictures of snakes or spiders attract more attention than neutral pictures in low-phobic individuals (Kindt & Brosschot, 1997;Thorpe & Salkovskis, 1998) or even in phobic participants (Kindt & Brosschot, 1999;Lavy, Van den Hout, & Arntz, 1993;Merckelbach, Kenemans, Dijkstra, & Schouten, 1993).…”

Attentional bias for emotional faces in generalized anxiety disorder

“…This work is broadly consistent with results from spider phobia studies using the modi®ed Stroop task with pictorial stimuli, which have provided evidence of an attentional bias for fear-related stimuli in phobic individuals (e.g. Kindt & Brosschot, 1997 ;Lavy & van den Hout, 1993 ; but see Merckelbach, Kenemans, Dijkstra & Schouten, 1993, for a null result with another interferencebased task).…”

Information processing biases in spider phobia: Application of the Stroop and “White Noise” Paradigm

“…However, no threat specific interference in phobic participants was found after adjusting for individual differences in overall color-naming speed. The failure to find threat specific attentional biases in spider phobic participants is consistent with prior studies (e.g., Merckelbach, Kenemans, Dijkstra, & Schouten, 1993;Wenzel & Holt, 1999). However, inspection of the means and SDs in Table 2 indicates that the spider-neutral interference in the spider phobic group in the exposure condition is the highest of the interference scores.…”