New study sheds light on the hidden attention struggle behind phobias

An eye-tracking study found that individuals suffering from phobias show delayed disengagement and slower decision times compared to those without phobias when responding to images. This indicates that phobic individuals exhibit poorer attentional control mechanisms and difficulty inhibiting irrelevant information. The paper was published in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

A phobia is an intense, irrational fear of a specific object, situation, or activity. People with phobias go to great lengths to avoid what they fear, even if it poses no real danger. Common phobias include arachnophobia (fear of spiders), acrophobia (fear of heights), and claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces). Social phobia (social anxiety disorder) is the fear of being judged or embarrassed in social situations. Symptoms may include panic, sweating, rapid heartbeat, and difficulty breathing when exposed to the feared object or situation.

Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder, along with generalized anxiety disorder. The dominant emotions associated with these disorders are fear and anxiety, which are critical for identifying and reacting to potential threats. However, individuals with these disorders experience these emotions disproportionately to the actual danger posed by the threat. Studies have shown that individuals with phobias tend to pay much more attention to potential threats and may have difficulties disengaging their attention, a phenomenon known as attention bias.

Study author Christina Saalwirth and her colleagues aimed to investigate the attention bias of individuals with phobias. They conducted an experiment using eye-tracking devices. Their hypothesis was that individuals with phobias would exhibit slower eye movements (i.e., slower saccadic latencies) when a displayed picture contained elements similar to those in a picture perceived as threatening due to a phobia. They expected this effect (slower saccadic latencies) to be weaker than the response toward pictures showing real threat objects, but more pronounced than the response toward neutral images.

They also anticipated that participants would be slower to stop looking at pictures of mice, dogs, snakes, spiders, pointed objects, and dentists (i.e., the most common objects related to specific phobias), regardless of whether they had a phobia. The study authors expected that phobic individuals would be slower when making decisions during experimental tasks compared to non-phobic individuals.

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To recruit participants, the study authors distributed an online questionnaire aimed at individuals who either had no phobias or clearly exhibited phobic tendencies. They recruited 33 individuals with a phobia (the phobic group) and 33 non-phobic participants. The groups were matched by age and gender, with 21 women in each group. The average age of participants was 28–29 years. The phobic group was further divided based on the type of phobia—fear of mice, dogs, snakes, spiders, pointed objects, or dentists.

In the experiment, the study authors presented a set of images arranged in circles on a display. Participants were instructed to initially focus on a picture in the center of the screen, then search for a target picture in an outer circle consisting of six images. They were required to indicate, via a button press, whether the object in the target picture was oriented to the left or right. The target pictures were related to the participants’ phobias, and participants were also asked to rate how much fear or disgust the images induced in them.

Eye-tracking devices recorded the participants’ gaze during the experiment, and a specialized device recorded their responses to the images.

The results showed that individuals with phobias experienced delayed disengagement regardless of whether the central image was related to their fear or not. In other words, they took longer to shift their gaze from the central image. They were also slower to decide whether the target image was oriented to the left or right when it was related to what they perceived as a threat. These findings indicate that phobic individuals tend to exhibit poorer attentional control mechanisms and difficulties inhibiting irrelevant information.

“Individuals with specific phobia exhibit a pronounced delay in disengagement, reflected in slower saccadic latencies, regardless of whether the stimulus is threat-related or neutral. Furthermore, when viewing a threat-related picture, these phobic individuals took longer to respond to a simple task, such as determining a target’s left or right orientation,” the study authors concluded.

This study sheds light on the attentional bias of individuals with phobias. However, it should be noted that the participants in the experiment were aware of the threatening objects they would encounter. Results might differ if participants were exposed to unexpected threatening stimuli.

The paper, “Eye Tracking Analysis of Attentional Disengagement in Phobic and Non-Phobic Individuals,” was authored by Christina Saalwirth, Maximilian Stefani, Marian Sauter, and Wolfgang Mack.