Are snakes and spiders special? Acquisition of negative valence and modified attentional processing by non-fear-relevant animal stimuli

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated differences in processing between fear-relevant stimuli, such as snakes and spiders, and non-fear-relevant stimuli. The current research examined whether non-fear-relevant animal stimuli, such as dogs, birds and fish, were processed like fear-relevant stimuli following aversive learning. Pictures of a priori fear-relevant animals, snakes and spiders, were evaluated as negative in affective priming and ratings and were preferentially attended to in a visual search task. Pictures of dogs, birds and fish that had been trained as CS+ in an aversive conditioning design were evaluated more negatively and facilitated dot probe detection relative to CS− pictures. The current studies demonstrated that stimuli viewed as positive prior to aversive learning were negative and were preferentially attended to after a brief learning episode. We propose that aversive learning may provide a mechanism for the acquisition of stimulus fear relevance.

Acknowledgements

The current research was completed as part of a PhD in psychology, and was supported by an APA scholarship.

Thanks to Holger Domsch and Susann Wolff who assisted in the data collection for the current studies. Thanks also to www.dogphoto.com for providing access to images of dogs for use in the current research.

Notes

¹There is current debate between associative and non-associative theorists as to whether preferential processing elicits an automatic and negative response upon initial contact with a fear-relevant stimulus. Non-associative theories propose that an automatic, negative response is generated upon first contact with the fear-relevant stimulus, whereas associative theories propose that an aversive learning episode must have occurred before a negative response will be generated automatically. Thus a previous aversive learning episode may be required for an encapsulated, emotional response to be elicited during preferential processing.

²In previous research, state and trait anxiety have been shown to differentially affect attentional bias and particularly attentional disengagement (Fox, Russo, Bowles, & Dutton, 2001). We included state and trait anxiety as covariates to exclude the possibility that results were skewed by a subset of anxious participants. The inclusion of covariates provides a more conservative estimate of effects and in this instance allows the interpretation that our results generalise to non-selected samples.