Improving the Approach-Avoidance Task by including "No-Go Trials"
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2018-02-05
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en
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Abstract
This study examined whether an Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT), which
utilises pictures of spiders to measure underlying cognitive biases, can be
improved by the inclusion of No-Go trials and to what extent this underlying
cognitive bias (called “spider tendency”) is related to “spider anxiety”. 142
participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions of an AAT: No-
Go or No No-Go. The AAT presented pictures of either spiders (experimental
stimulus), butterflies (control stimulus) or ladybugs (No-Go stimulus). All
pictures had a secondary property of being tilted either to the left or to the right,
on which participants were asked to react by either pushing or pulling a joystick.
While in the No No-Go condition this instruction was applied to all stimuli,
participants in the No-Go condition were asked to react to pictures of ladybugs
differently, namely by not moving the joystick at all. After the task, they had to
fill in a Spider Anxiety Screening (SAS) to measure their degree of “spider
anxiety”. It was found that the inclusion of No-Go trials indeed improved the
measurement of “spider tendency” by the AAT. This confirms the inclusion of
No-Go trials as an effective improvement for the AAT by enhancing the attention
for the stimulus content, while maintaining the advantages of indirect instructions
based on secondary properties. Surprisingly, “spider tendency” was not related to
“spider anxiety”. Implications and limitations of the present study are discussed.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen