title: The relationship between cognitive avoidance and attentional bias for snake-related thoughts.
abstract: Building on the work of Lavy and van den Hout (Lavy, E. H., & van den Hout, M. A. (1994a). Cognitive avoidance and attentional bias: Causal relationships. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 18 (2) 179-191; Lavy, E. H., & van den Hout, M. A. (1994b). Cognitive avoidance and attentional bias: Causal relationships. Behavior Therapy, 24, 645-657), the purpose of the present study was to examine a functional relationship between thought suppression and attentional bias for snake-related thoughts. It was hypothesized that thought suppression is causally involved in the emergence of attentional bias. An experiment was conducted with 71 snake-fearful and non-snake-fearful participants to investigate whether instructions for suppression were sufficient to induce an attentional bias toward snake-related words. Thirty-five participants were instructed to suppress all snake-related thoughts, while 36 participants received control instructions. Both groups then completed a 5-min stream of consciousness exercise followed by a dot-probe attention task including snake words, general emotion words, and neutral words. Results indicated that participants instructed to suppress snake-related thoughts exhibited a more pronounced attentional bias toward snake-related word pairs. The same participants did not exhibit an attentional bias toward general emotion or neutral words. Moreover, there was a significant negative correlation between snake-related thoughts and probe detection latency. Results are interpreted as providing support for a causal relationship between thought suppression and attentional bias for snake-related thoughts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Department 3415, University of Wyoming, 1000 E. University Avenue, Laramie, WY 82071, USA. tfawzy@uwyo.edu
authors.forename: Tamer I
authors.initials: TI
authors.lastname: Fawzy
authors.forename: Jeffrey E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Hecker
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Clark
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D004924:Escape Reaction; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D012911:Snakes; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013850:Thinking; D014825:Vocabulary