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Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning the attention to a previously attended location. As a foraging facilitator it is thought to facilitate systematic visual search. With respect to neutral stimuli, this is generally thought to be adaptive, but when threatening stimuli appea...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Berdica, Elisa, Gerdes, Antje B. M., Pittig, Andre, Alpers, Georg W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4101934/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25101171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/183924
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author Berdica, Elisa
Gerdes, Antje B. M.
Pittig, Andre
Alpers, Georg W.
author_facet Berdica, Elisa
Gerdes, Antje B. M.
Pittig, Andre
Alpers, Georg W.
author_sort Berdica, Elisa
collection PubMed
description Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning the attention to a previously attended location. As a foraging facilitator it is thought to facilitate systematic visual search. With respect to neutral stimuli, this is generally thought to be adaptive, but when threatening stimuli appear in our environment, such a bias may be maladaptive. This experiment investigated the influence of phobia-related stimuli on the IOR effect using a discrimination task. A sample of 50 students (25 high, 25 low in spider fear) completed an IOR task including schematic representations of spiders or butterflies as targets. Eye movements were recorded and to assess discrimination among targets, participants indicated with button presses if targets were spiders or butterflies. Reaction time data did not reveal a significant IOR effect but a significant interaction of group and target; spider fearful participants were faster to respond to spider targets than to butterflies. Furthermore, eye-tracking data showed a robust IOR effect independent of stimulus category. These results offer a more comprehensive assessment of the motor and oculomotor factors involved in the IOR effect.
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spelling pubmed-41019342014-08-06 Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data Berdica, Elisa Gerdes, Antje B. M. Pittig, Andre Alpers, Georg W. J Ophthalmol Research Article Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning the attention to a previously attended location. As a foraging facilitator it is thought to facilitate systematic visual search. With respect to neutral stimuli, this is generally thought to be adaptive, but when threatening stimuli appear in our environment, such a bias may be maladaptive. This experiment investigated the influence of phobia-related stimuli on the IOR effect using a discrimination task. A sample of 50 students (25 high, 25 low in spider fear) completed an IOR task including schematic representations of spiders or butterflies as targets. Eye movements were recorded and to assess discrimination among targets, participants indicated with button presses if targets were spiders or butterflies. Reaction time data did not reveal a significant IOR effect but a significant interaction of group and target; spider fearful participants were faster to respond to spider targets than to butterflies. Furthermore, eye-tracking data showed a robust IOR effect independent of stimulus category. These results offer a more comprehensive assessment of the motor and oculomotor factors involved in the IOR effect. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2014 2014-07-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4101934/ /pubmed/25101171 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/183924 Text en Copyright © 2014 Elisa Berdica et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Berdica, Elisa
Gerdes, Antje B. M.
Pittig, Andre
Alpers, Georg W.
Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data
title Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data
title_full Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data
title_fullStr Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data
title_full_unstemmed Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data
title_short Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data
title_sort inhibition of return in fear of spiders: discrepant eye movement and reaction time data
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4101934/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25101171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/183924
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