Citation

Flykt A, Lindeberg S, Derakshan N. Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 2012; 74(7): 1437-1445.

Affiliation

Department of Social Work and Psychology, Faculty of Health and Occupational studies, University of Gävle, 801 76, Gävle, Sweden, Anders.Flykt@hig.se.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.3758/s13414-012-0336-6

PMID

22744740

Abstract

To investigate whether fear affects the strength with which responses are made, 12 animal-fearful individuals (five snake fearful and seven spider fearful) were instructed to decide as quickly as possible whether an animal target from a deviant category was present in a 3 × 4 item (animal) search array. The animal categories were snakes, spiders, and cats. Response force was measured, in newtons. The results showed that the strength of the response was greater when the feared animal served as the target than when it served as the distractors. This finding was corroborated by evoked heart rate changes to the stimuli. Our findings strengthen the argument that focused attention on a single, feared animal can lead to increases in manual force.

Language: en