No evidence of attentional prioritization for threatening targets in visual search.

Throughout human evolutionary history, snakes have been associated with danger and threat. Research has shown that snakes are prioritized by our attentional system, despite many of us rarely encountering them in our daily lives. We conducted two high-powered, pre-registered experiments (total N = 224) manipulating target prevalence to understand this heightened prioritization of threatening targets. Target prevalence refers to the proportion of trials wherein a target is presented; reductions in prevalence consistently reduce the likelihood that targets will be found. We reasoned that snake targets in visual search should experience weaker effects of low target prevalence compared to non-threatening targets (rabbits) because they should be prioritized by searchers despite appearing rarely. In both experiments, we found evidence of classic prevalence effects but (contrasting prior work) we also found that search for threatening targets was slower and less accurate than for nonthreatening targets. This surprising result is possibly due to methodological issues common in prior studies, including comparatively smaller sample sizes, fewer trials, and a tendency to exclusively examine conditions of relatively high prevalence. Our findings call into question accounts of threat prioritization and suggest that prior attention findings may be constrained to a narrow range of circumstances.

Key factors behind various specific phobia subtypes.

While it has been suggested that more than a quarter of the whole population is at risk of developing some form of specific phobia (SP) during their lives, we still know little about the various risk and protective factors and underlying mechanisms. Moreover, although SPs are distinct mental disorder categories, most studies do not distinguish between them, or stress their differences. Thus, our study was manifold. We examined the psychometric properties of the Specific Phobia Questionnaire (SPQ) and assessed whether it can be used for screening in the general population in a large sample (N = 685). Then, using general linear modeling on a second sample (N = 432), we tested how potential socio-demographic, cognitive emotion regulatory, and personality variables were associated with the five SP subtypes. Our results show that the SPQ is a reliable screening tool. More importantly, we identified transdiagnostic (e.g., younger age, female gender, rumination, catastrophizing, positive refocusing) as well as phobia-specific factors that may contribute to the development and maintenance of SPs. Our results support previous claims that phobias are more different than previously thought, and, consequently, should be separately studied, instead of collapsing into one category. Our findings could be pertinent for both prevention and intervention strategies.