TY - JOUR
T1 - Detecting the snake in the grass
T2 - Attention to fear-relevant stimuli by adults and young children: Research article
AU - LoBue, Vanessa
AU - DeLoache, Judy S.
PY - 2008/3
Y1 - 2008/3
N2 - Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias. In visual detection tasks, adults detect their presence more rapidly than the presence of other kinds of visual stimuli. We report evidence that very young children share this attentional bias. In three experiments, preschool children and adults were asked to find a single target picture among an array of eight distractors. Both the children and the adults detected snakes more rapidly than three types of nonthreatening stimuli (flowers, frogs, and caterpillars). These results provide the first evidence of enhanced visual detection of evolutionarily relevant threat stimuli in young children.
AB - Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias. In visual detection tasks, adults detect their presence more rapidly than the presence of other kinds of visual stimuli. We report evidence that very young children share this attentional bias. In three experiments, preschool children and adults were asked to find a single target picture among an array of eight distractors. Both the children and the adults detected snakes more rapidly than three types of nonthreatening stimuli (flowers, frogs, and caterpillars). These results provide the first evidence of enhanced visual detection of evolutionarily relevant threat stimuli in young children.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=40249111855&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02081.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02081.x
M3 - Article
C2 - 18315802
AN - SCOPUS:40249111855
VL - 19
SP - 284
EP - 289
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
SN - 0956-7976
IS - 3
ER -