Reducing attention bias in spider fear by manipulating expectancies

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Previous research indicated that a-priori expectancy does not influence attention bias towards spiders.
• Attention bias is often measured by comparing target detection rates in visual search tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the causal interaction between expectancy and attention biases in spider fear.
• To determine if manipulating target frequency, and thus expectancy, affects attention bias.

Main Methods:

• Participants completed visual search tasks where target frequency was manipulated.
• Verbal cues preceded targets, indicating their likelihood of appearance.
• Attention bias was measured by comparing detection of spider targets versus neutral bird targets.

Main Results:

• When birds were more frequent (Experiment 1), spider attention bias significantly decreased in the student sample.
• These findings were replicated in both low- and high-fearful participants (Experiment 2).
• When spiders were more frequent (Experiment 3), attention bias reduction was less pronounced, suggesting target salience competes with expectancy.

Conclusions:

• Varying expectancy through target frequency manipulation can reduce attention bias towards spiders.
• This is the first study to demonstrate that expectancy manipulation can reduce attention bias, notably in individuals with high spider fear.
• Target salience appears to play a role in attention bias, interacting with expectancy.