Citation

Finucane AM, Power MJ. J. Anxiety Disord. 2010; 24(1): 42-48.

Affiliation

School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, Scotland, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.janxdis.2009.08.005

PMID

19729280

Abstract

The present experiment examines the effect of fear on efficiency of three attention networks: executive attention, orienting and alerting, in a healthy female sample. International Affective Picture System (IAPS) images were used to elicit both a fear response and a non-emotional response in 100 participants. During the emotion manipulation, participants performed a modified version of the Attention Network Test (ANT). Results showed enhanced executive attention in the fear condition compared to the control condition. Specifically, during a fear experience participants were better able to inhibit irrelevant information resulting in faster response times to a target. There was no effect of fear on orienting while the effect of fear on alerting was inconclusive. It is suggested that enhanced executive attention in fear-eliciting situations may function to focus attention on a potentially threat-related target, thus facilitating subsequent rapid responding.

Language: en