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Don't look now! Oculomotor avoidance as a conditioned disgust response
Thomas Armstrong1, Laura McClenahan1, Jody Kittle1
1Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
|November 6, 2013
Summary
Disgust conditioning leads to attentional avoidance of disgust cues, particularly after extinction. This learning is linked to disgust sensitivity and may inform anxiety disorder research.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Pavlovian conditioning is key to fear learning in anxiety disorders.
- Disgust plays a role in certain anxiety disorders, suggesting disgust learning is also important.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate disgust conditioning's effect on attentional bias using eye tracking.
- To compare disgust conditioning with a negative conditioning paradigm.
Main Methods:
- Participants underwent disgust or negative conditioning, pairing faces (CS+) with specific videos (US).
- Eye tracking measured attentional biases towards conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.
- Self-reported disgust and disgust sensitivity were assessed.
Main Results:
- Attentional avoidance of the disgust CS+ emerged post-extinction, linked to self-reported disgust.
- The negative conditioning group did not show CS+ avoidance.
- Disgust US elicited avoidance, and disgust sensitivity correlated with avoidance of both US and CS+.
Conclusions:
- Disgust conditioning influences attention, with avoidance patterns emerging post-extinction.
- Individual disgust sensitivity modulates attentional responses to disgust cues.
- Findings offer insights into disgust, learning, and attention in anxiety disorders.
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