Expectancy and attention bias to spiders: Dissecting anticipation and allocation processes using ERPs.

The current registered report focused on the temporal dynamics of the relationship between expectancy and attention toward threat, to better understand the mechanisms underlying the prioritization of threat detection over expectancy. In the current event-related potentials experiment, a-priori expectancy was manipulated, and attention bias was measured, using a well-validated paradigm. A visual search array was presented, with one of two targets: spiders (threatening) or birds (neutral).

Spider vs. guns: expectancy and attention biases to phylogenetic threat do not extend to ontogenetic threat.

Introduction: Attention bias plays an important role in specific fears and phobias. Previous studies revealed that expectancies affect attention toward neutral stimuli but not threatening stimuli. The aim of the current study was to test whether this selective influence of expectancies on attention is specific to phylogenetic threat (i.

Cognitive Biases in Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia: A Review.

Blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia can lead to avoidance of crucial medical procedures and to detrimental health consequences, even among health workers. Yet unlike other specific phobias, BII phobia has been understudied. Specifically, while cognitive biases have been extensively investigated in other anxiety disorders, little is known about the same biases in BII phobia.

The Missing Pieces of the Puzzle: A Review on the Interactive Nature of A-Priori Expectancies and Attention Bias toward Threat.

The role of attention bias in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders has been studied extensively over decades. Attention bias reflects maladaptation in cognitive processing, as perceived threatening stimuli receive prioritized processing even when they are task-irrelevant or factually unthreatening. Recently, there has been some interest in the role of a-priori expectancies in attention bias toward threat.

Reducing attention bias in spider fear by manipulating expectancies.

The present series of studies examines the causal interaction between expectancy and attention biases in spider fear. Previous studies found that a-priori expectancy does not affect attention bias toward spiders, as measured by detection of spider targets in a subsequent visual search array compared to detection of bird targets (i.e.