Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
Arne Öhman, Joaquim Soares (1993)
On the automatic nature of phobic fear: conditioned electrodermal responses to masked fear-relevant stimuli.Journal of abnormal psychology, 102 1
R. Klorman, T. Weerts, J. Hastings, B. Melamed, P. Lang (1974)
Psychometric description of some specific-fear questionnaires.Behavior Therapy, 5
Jeremy Wolfe, Todd Horowitz (2008)
Visual searchScholarpedia, 3
L. Pessoa, Leslie Ungerleider (2004)
Neuroimaging studies of attention and the processing of emotion-laden stimuli.Progress in brain research, 144
A. Öhman, D. Lundqvist, F. Esteves (2001)
The face in the crowd revisited: a threat advantage with schematic stimuli.Journal of personality and social psychology, 80 3
O. Lipp, A. Waters (2007)
When danger lurks in the background: attentional capture by animal fear-relevant distractors is specific and selectively enhanced by animal fear.Emotion, 7 1
W. Miltner, Silke Krieschel, H. Hecht, R. Trippe, T. Weiss (2004)
Eye movements and behavioral responses to threatening and nonthreatening stimuli during visual search in phobic and nonphobic subjects.Emotion, 4 4
A. Öhman, Anders Flykt, F. Esteves (2001)
Emotion drives attention: detecting the snake in the grass.Journal of experimental psychology. General, 130 3
Raymond Dolan, P. Vuilleumier (2003)
Amygdala Automaticity in Emotional ProcessingAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 985
N. Lavie (2005)
Distracted and confused?: Selective attention under loadTrends in Cognitive Sciences, 9
J. Eccles (1980)
The emotional brain.Bulletin et memoires de l'Academie royale de medecine de Belgique, 135 11
(1969)
The epidemiology of common fear and phobia
N. Lavie, S. Cox (1997)
On the Efficiency of Visual Selective Attention: Efficient Visual Search Leads to Inefficient Distractor RejectionPsychological Science, 8
A. Ohman (2005)
The role of the amygdala in human fear: automatic detection of threat.Psychoneuroendocrinology, 30 10
(2000)
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4 th ed., text rev
(1997)
The attentional basis for primate responses to snakes
A. Öhman, Joaquim Soares (1994)
"Unconscious anxiety": phobic responses to masked stimuli.Journal of abnormal psychology, 103 2
A. Öhman, S. Mineka (2001)
Fears, phobias, and preparedness: toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning.Psychological review, 108 3
S. Paradiso (1998)
The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional LifeAmerican Journal of Psychiatry, 155
Vanessa Lobue, J. Deloache (2008)
Detecting the Snake in the GrassPsychological Science, 19
L. Isbell (2006)
Snakes as agents of evolutionary change in primate brains.Journal of human evolution, 51 1
J. Duncan, G. Humphreys (1989)
Visual search and stimulus similarity.Psychological review, 96 3
A. Öhman (2008)
Fear and anxiety: Overlaps and dissociations.
S. Agras, David Sylvester, D. Oliveau (1969)
The epidemiology of common fears and phobia.Comprehensive psychiatry, 10 2
S. Soares, F. Esteves, D. Lundqvist, A. Ohman (2009)
Some animal specific fears are more specific than others: Evidence from attention and emotion measures.Behaviour research and therapy, 47 12
A. Kasturiratne, A. Wickremasinghe, N. Silva, N. Gunawardena, A. Pathmeswaran, R. Premaratna, L. Savioli, D. Lalloo, H. Silva, K. Winkel (2008)
The Global Burden of Snakebite: A Literature Analysis and Modelling Based on Regional Estimates of Envenoming and DeathsPLoS Medicine, 5
M. Shibasaki, N. Kawai (2009)
Rapid detection of snakes by Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata): an evolutionarily predisposed visual system.Journal of comparative psychology, 123 2
S. Mineka, R. Keir, Veda Price (1980)
Fear of snakes in wild- and laboratory-reared rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)Animal Learning & Behavior, 8
Isbell, Michael Fisher (2009)
The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent
N. Lavie (1995)
Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 21 3
Based on evolutionary considerations, it was hypothesized that humans have been shaped to easily spot snakes in visually cluttered scenes that might otherwise hide camouflaged snakes. This hypothesis was tested in a visual search experiment in which I assessed automatic attention capture to evolutionarily-relevant distractor stimuli (snakes), in comparison with another animal which is also feared but where this fear has a disputed evolutionary origin (spiders), and neutral stimuli (mushrooms). Sixty participants were engaged in a task that involved the detection of a target (a bird) among pictures of fruits. Unexpectedly, on some trials, a snake, a spider, or a mushroom replaced one of the fruits. The question of interest was whether the distracting stimuli slowed the reaction times for finding the target (the bird) to different degrees. Perceptual load of the task was manipulated by increments in the set size (6 or 12 items) on different trials. The findings showed that snake stimuli were processed preferentially, particularly under conditions where attentional resources were depleted, which reinforced the role of this evolutionarily-relevant stimulus in accessing the visual system (Isbell, 2009).
Evolutionary Psychology – SAGE
Published: Apr 1, 2012
Keywords: snake detection theory; visual search; perceptual load
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.