What's so special about slithering serpents? children and adults rapidly detect snakes based on their simple features

Vanessa Lobue; Judy S. Deloache

doi:10.1080/13506285.2010.522216

What's so special about slithering serpents? children and adults rapidly detect snakes based on their simple features

Vanessa Lobue
, Judy S. Deloache

Rutgers Newark, Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

82 Scopus citations

Abstract

Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias around the world. In visual search tasks, both adults and young children have repeatedly been found to visually detect snakes more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. An important question that remains unstudied is what accounts for humans' rapid response to snakes? Here we suggest that specific features of snakes themselves lead to their rapid detection. The results of five experiments suggest that a snake's shape is the crucial factor in their rapid detection.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	129-143
Number of pages	15
Journal	Visual Cognition
Volume	19
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2010.522216
State	Published - Jan 2011

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Cognitive Neuroscience

Keywords

Attention
Detection
Threat

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10.1080/13506285.2010.522216

Cite this

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title = "What's so special about slithering serpents? children and adults rapidly detect snakes based on their simple features",

abstract = "Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias around the world. In visual search tasks, both adults and young children have repeatedly been found to visually detect snakes more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. An important question that remains unstudied is what accounts for humans' rapid response to snakes? Here we suggest that specific features of snakes themselves lead to their rapid detection. The results of five experiments suggest that a snake's shape is the crucial factor in their rapid detection.",

keywords = "Attention, Detection, Threat",

author = "Vanessa Lobue and Deloache, \{Judy S.\}",

note = "Funding Information: An alternative possibility that is supported by the current research is that humans have low-level biases for shapes that resemble snakes. Many have suggested that such a bias has evolutionary origins (Isbell, 2006). Ohman et al. (2001), for example, argued that since snakes constituted a recurrent and widespread threat for humans throughout evolutionary history, there would have a reproductive advantage for humans who responded to snakes very quickly. They go on to suggest that detection of snakes should be preattentive or automatic*without conscious, effortful processing. To support this claim, they found that the speed of detecting a snake or spider was not affected by the number of distractors in a matrix: Latencies for detecting a snake or spider did not differ for 2≫2 versus 3≫3 matrices. In contrast, the speed of detecting neutral stimuli (flowers or mushrooms) was significantly slowed by the presence of more distractors. Further, they found that the position of the target in a matrix did not affect detection of snakes or spiders, whereas flower or mushroom targets were located more rapidly when they appeared in the middle row.",

year = "2011",

month = jan,

doi = "10.1080/13506285.2010.522216",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "19",

pages = "129--143",

journal = "Visual Cognition",

issn = "1350-6285",

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T1 - What's so special about slithering serpents? children and adults rapidly detect snakes based on their simple features

AU - Lobue, Vanessa

AU - Deloache, Judy S.

N1 - Funding Information: An alternative possibility that is supported by the current research is that humans have low-level biases for shapes that resemble snakes. Many have suggested that such a bias has evolutionary origins (Isbell, 2006). Ohman et al. (2001), for example, argued that since snakes constituted a recurrent and widespread threat for humans throughout evolutionary history, there would have a reproductive advantage for humans who responded to snakes very quickly. They go on to suggest that detection of snakes should be preattentive or automatic*without conscious, effortful processing. To support this claim, they found that the speed of detecting a snake or spider was not affected by the number of distractors in a matrix: Latencies for detecting a snake or spider did not differ for 2≫2 versus 3≫3 matrices. In contrast, the speed of detecting neutral stimuli (flowers or mushrooms) was significantly slowed by the presence of more distractors. Further, they found that the position of the target in a matrix did not affect detection of snakes or spiders, whereas flower or mushroom targets were located more rapidly when they appeared in the middle row.

PY - 2011/1

Y1 - 2011/1

N2 - Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias around the world. In visual search tasks, both adults and young children have repeatedly been found to visually detect snakes more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. An important question that remains unstudied is what accounts for humans' rapid response to snakes? Here we suggest that specific features of snakes themselves lead to their rapid detection. The results of five experiments suggest that a snake's shape is the crucial factor in their rapid detection.

AB - Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias around the world. In visual search tasks, both adults and young children have repeatedly been found to visually detect snakes more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. An important question that remains unstudied is what accounts for humans' rapid response to snakes? Here we suggest that specific features of snakes themselves lead to their rapid detection. The results of five experiments suggest that a snake's shape is the crucial factor in their rapid detection.

KW - Attention

KW - Detection

KW - Threat

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What's so special about slithering serpents? children and adults rapidly detect snakes based on their simple features

Abstract

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Keywords

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