Joystick vs. Touchscreen: Validation and Comparison of Approach-Avoidance Tasks in Spider Fear

Abstract

Abstract The current study investigates spider phobia using different versions of the Approach-Avoidance Task. Spider phobia is a common anxiety disorder marked by an intense fear, quick detection, and behavioral avoidance of spiders. A tool to implicitly measure behavioral tendencies, as well as to alter them, is the Approach-Avoidance Task, in which participants are instructed to pull certain images closer or push them away, usually utilizing a joystick. A more modern device to execute this task with could be a touchscreen. Therefore, the current experiment examines whether those two devices prove useful to measure spider phobia. It was hypothesized that spider fearful individuals would push spider stimuli away more quickly while taking longer to pull them closer. This effect could however not be found for the joystick task, nor for the touchscreen task. Even though the results are not in line with previous research on this topic, it could be linked to some other studies, providing alternative explanations. It is yet to be investigated which other factors may play a role in behavioral avoidance, other than fear.