What's so scary about needles and knives? Examining the role of experience in threat detection

Abstract

Snakes and spiders constitute a category of evolutionarily relevant stimuli that were recurrent and widespread threats to survival throughout human evolution. A large body of research has suggests that humans have an inborn bias to detect these stimuli more rapidly than non-threatening stimuli. However, recent research has demonstrated that adults also show rapid detection of modern threat-relevant stimuli, such as knives and syringes. This suggests that experience may also lead to rapid detection of threatening stimuli. The research reported here is an investigation of whether young children have an attentional bias for the detection of two types of modern threat-relevant stimuli—one with which they have experience (syringes) versus one with which they do not (knives). As predicted, the children detected the presence of syringes more quickly than pens, but did not detect knives more quickly than spoons. These results provide strong support for multiple mechanisms in threat detection.

Keywords:

• Threat
• Detecation
• Fear
• Attention
• Attentional bias

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Judy DeLoache for her frequent advising during the running of these studies and during the writing of the manuscript. I am also grateful to Catherine Thrasher, Themba Carr, Christina Danko, Joseph Romano, and Lindsay Doswell for valuable assistance conducting the research, Dennis Proffitt for help with equipment, and Evan Rappoport for programming.