Attentional Bias During Visual Threat Processing n Different Degree of Cockroach Fear Individuals: Time Course Analysis
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Chu, Ching-I
Abstract
Cognitive-motivational theories of phobias propose that patients’ behavior is characterized by a hypervigilance-avoidance pattern that interplays between automatic and strategic biases in attention. In two experiments, we investigated the time course of attentional bias for colorful cockroach pictures as compared to dog pictures by visual dot probe task in three groups varied with high, median, and low degree of cockroach fear. The present study was a mixed factorial design. In study 1 (N =46), the between subject factor was group (high, median, and low degree of cockroach fear), the within subjects factors were location of cockroach (right and left), location of dot (congruent to cockroach, and incongruent to cockroach) and presentation time (200ms, 500ms, and 2000ms). The results showed that for the 500ms condition, high fearful individuals attended away from roaches, but low and median fearful individuals attended to roaches. For the 2000ms, high and median fearful individuals attended away from roaches, but low fearful individuals still attended to roaches. There was no difference between the three groups for the 200ms condition. In study 2 (N =49), presentation time was varied as 100ms, 200ms and 500ms. The results showed that for the 100ms condition, high and median fearful individuals attended to roaches but low fearful individuals attended away from roaches. For the 200ms, median fearful individuals attended to roaches, but high fearful individuals attended away from roaches. There was no difference for the 500ms condition. Put together, the results indicated that both high and median cockroach fearful individuals initially directed their attention towards fear-relevant stimuli in a rapid and automatic way; however, only high fearful individuals showed a trend indicating that the initial facilitated attention was rapidly followed by avoidance which has been thought to prevent objective evaluation and habituation. The implications of the results with regard to cognitive processing and cognitive behavior therapy and future research possibilities are proposed.
Subjects
attentional bias
time course
dot probe task
cockroach phobia
fear
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