What's so special about slithering serpents? Children and adults rapidly detect snakes based on their simple features

Abstract

Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias around the world. In visual search tasks, both adults and young children have repeatedly been found to visually detect snakes more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. An important question that remains unstudied is what accounts for humans’ rapid response to snakes? Here we suggest that specific features of snakes themselves lead to their rapid detection. The results of five experiments suggest that a snake's shape is the crucial factor in their rapid detection.

Keywords:

• Attention
• Detection
• Threat

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Themba Carr, Catherine Thrasher, Chrystal Propst, Kathleen Sherman, and Lindsay Doswell for valuable assistance conducting the research, Dennis Proffitt for help with equipment, and Evan Rappoport for programming.