Abstract
We investigated the neural mechanisms and the autonomic and cognitive responses associated with visual avoidance behavior in spider phobia. Spider phobic and control participants imagined visiting different forest locations with the possibility of encountering spiders, snakes, or birds (neutral reference category). In each experimental trial, participants saw a picture of a forest location followed by a picture of a spider, snake, or bird, and then rated their personal risk of encountering these animals in this context, as well as their fear. The greater the visual avoidance of spiders that a phobic participant demonstrated (as measured by eye tracking), the higher were her autonomic arousal and neural activity in the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and precuneus at picture onset. Visual avoidance of spiders in phobics also went hand in hand with subsequently reduced cognitive risk of encounters. Control participants, in contrast, displayed a positive relationship between gaze duration toward spiders, on the one hand, and autonomic responding, as well as OFC, ACC, and precuneus activity, on the other hand. In addition, they showed reduced encounter risk estimates when they looked longer at the animal pictures. Our data are consistent with the idea that one reason for phobics to avoid phobic information may be grounded in heightened activity in the fear circuit, which signals potential threat. Because of the absence of alternative efficient regulation strategies, visual avoidance may then function to down-regulate cognitive risk evaluations for threatening information about the phobic stimuli. Control participants, in contrast, may be characterized by a different coping style, whereby paying visual attention to potentially threatening information may help them to actively down-regulate cognitive evaluations of risk.
Highlights
Fear is an emotion that influences what is in the focus of attention and what is ignored
According to Ăhman and Mineka (2001), evolution has formed highly conserved fear circuits that ensure rapid focusing of attention on potential threat sources in order to prioritize the processing of fear- or survival-relevant situations
The most prominent view is that phobic and anxious individuals are characterized by a so-called vigilance-avoidance pattern, implying an early enhanced automatic direction of attention toward a threat source, but subsequent diversion of attention away from the threat, when more controlled processes come into play (e.g., Mogg et al, 1997; Amir et al, 1998; Rinck and Becker, 2006)
Summary
Fear is an emotion that influences what is in the focus of attention and what is ignored. Research has distinguished between early, automatic, and later, more controlled mechanisms of attention deployment. The most prominent view is that phobic and anxious individuals are characterized by a so-called vigilance-avoidance pattern, implying an early enhanced automatic direction of attention toward a threat source, but subsequent diversion of attention away from the threat, when more controlled processes come into play (e.g., Mogg et al, 1997; Amir et al, 1998; Rinck and Becker, 2006). During the first 500 ms of stimulus presentation, spider fearful and non-spider fearful individuals did not differ in their fixation times on spiders; both looked longer at spiders than they did at flowers. This study speaks to differences in later, more controlled attention deployment between the two groups of participants, but, contrary to the conceptions of Ăhman and collaborators (e.g., Ăhman et al, 2001), not to differences in initial vigilance. Whether speeded automatic threat detection occurs or not may depend on task characteristics (Rinck et al, 2005)
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