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

2009, Cognition & Emotion

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. Fear relevance refers to the efficacy with which a stimulus is associated with fear. Phylogenetic, fear-relevant stimuli, such as snakes, spiders or heights, are more commonly associated with phobia than are other stimuli, and are often referred to as ''evolutionarily'' fear-relevant stimuli, referring to the notion that they are innately fear relevant. Ontogenetic, fear-relevant stimuli, such as guns, are evolutionarily recent stimuli that are proposed to have become fear relevant through learning. Both phylogenetic and ontogenetic fear-relevant stimuli display several consistent properties, such as selective associability with fear and access to preferential attentional processing. Mechanisms for phylogenetic fear relevance have been defined