Attentional and behavioural responses of spider fearfuls to virtual spiders

Abstract

This study employed an immersed virtual environment (IVE) in the Nijmegen RIVERlab to study spider fearfuls’ attentional and motor reactions to virtual spiders. The participants were exposed to virtual spiders while completing an unrelated task, walking freely through a virtual museum. Compared to non-fearful controls, spider fearfuls showed an increase in state anxiety, they spent more time looking at spiders, and they exhibited spontaneous behavioural avoidance of spiders and visually similar objects. The results extend, and to some degree contradict, those of earlier studies with static pictures, and they speak to the usefulness of state-of-the-art IVEs in fundamental anxiety research.

Keywords:

• Spider fear
• Attention
• Avoidance
• Virtual reality

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and by a grant to the fourth author from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO; 480-05-010).

We are grateful to Jeroen Derks, Hubert Voogd, Pascal de Water, and Agathe for their assistance, and to the reviewers for helpful comments.

Notes

¹Of course looking at stimuli or not is behaviour too. Here, we use the term behavioural avoidance in a more limited sense, however. It refers to movements that increase the distance between an individual and a threatening stimulus.