The malicious serpent:: Snakes as a prototypical stimulus for an evolved module of fear
The malicious serpent:: Snakes as a prototypical stimulus for an evolved module of fear
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DOI：
10.1111/1467-8721.01211
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发表时间：
2003-02-01
影响因子：
7.2
通讯作者：
Mineka, S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Öhman, A;Mineka, S
作为爬行动物，蛇可能对早期哺乳动物的生存环境构成致命威胁。我们回顾了一些发现，这些发现表明蛇仍然是人类的特殊刺激物。对蛇的强烈恐惧在人类和其他灵长类动物中都很普遍。人类和猴子通过直接或间接的条件反射，比对大多数其他刺激的恐惧更容易学会对蛇的恐惧。人类对蛇的恐惧既不需要有意识地感知蛇，也不需要有意识地感知蛇；相反，这两个过程都可以在隐藏刺激下发生。人类倾向于感知蛇和厌恶刺激之间的虚幻关联，他们的注意力在复杂的视觉展示中被蛇自动捕获。总之，这些和其他发现描绘了大脑中进化的恐惧模块。这些模块被有威胁的刺激选择性地、自动地激活，相对地从认知中被封装起来，并来源于专门的神经回路。
As reptiles, snakes may have signified deadly threats in the environment of early mammals. We review findings suggesting that snakes remain special stimuli for humans. Intense snake fear is prevalent in both humans and other primates. Humans and monkeys learn snake fear more easily than fear of most other stimuli through direct or vicarious conditioning. Neither the elicitation nor the conditions of snake fear in humans requires that snakes be consciously perceived; rather, both processes can occur with masked stimuli. Humans tend to perceive illusory correlations between snakes and aversive stimuli, and their attention is automatically captured by snakes in complex visual displays. Together, these and other findings delineate an evolved fear module in the brain. This modules selectively and automatically activated by once-threatening stimuli, is relatively encapsulated from cognition, and derives from specialized neural circuitry.