Out of sight, but still in mind: Electrocortical correlates of attentional capture in spider phobia as revealed by a ‘dot probe’ paradigm

The current investigation focused on attentional processes in spider phobia. Twenty phobics and 20 controls performed a dot-probe task while event-related potentials were recorded. In each trial they viewed a picture pair (a spider or a generally disgust eliciting picture that was paired with a neutral picture) for either 100 or 1500 ms. After the offset a visual probe (a dot) was presented either at the previous position of the emotionally relevant or the neutral slide and participants were asked to indicate with a button press whether the dot had been presented on the left or the right side of the screen. Results revealed a modulation of the centro-parietal P300 (340–500 ms after picture onset). Amplitudes were higher when the dot replaced a spider than when it replaced a neutral picture. This was phobia-specific, as it was only present in phobics and did not appear in response to disgust pictures. Moreover, the modulation could only be shown for short presentation times. The results are interpreted to reflect motivated attention in spider phobia, if disorder-relevant and neutral pictures are shown simultaneously. As the modulation of the P300 was found after picture offset, attentional allocation seems to be persist after the phobic object is no longer present.