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Differentiating sexual preference in men: Using dual task rapid serial visual presentation task
Author(s) -
Zappalà Angelo,
Antfolk Jan,
Bäckström Anna,
Dombert Beate,
Mokros Andreas,
Santtila Pekka
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/sjop.12050
Subject(s) - psychology , rapid serial visual presentation , preference , task (project management) , affect (linguistics) , cognition , cognitive psychology , dual (grammatical number) , presentation (obstetrics) , visual attention , developmental psychology , audiology , neuroscience , communication , medicine , art , literature , management , economics , radiology , microeconomics
Cognition research suggests that allocating attention resources to evolutionarily relevant stimuli is facilitated suggesting that sexual stimuli interfere with human information processing. In a group of gay ( n = 13) and straight men ( n = 13) recruited in Finland, Germany and Italy, we investigated if and how sexually relevant visual stimuli affect information processing of both a target one (T1) and a subsequent target two (T2) in a dual target rapid serial visual presentation procedure. We hypothesized that: (1) due to the attentional blink ( AB ) phenomenon, the accuracy of reporting of T2 would decrease when following accurately identified sexually preferred T1 compared to accurately identified non‐sexually preferred T1; 2) due to the pop out effect, the accuracy of reporting of T1 and T2 would be relatively increased when T1 and T2 were sexually preferred by the participants compared to when they were not. Our findings did not support hypothesis 1 but supported hypothesis 2. We further found that the pop out effect had a good capacity to differentiate sexual preference between the groups of gay and straight men. We conclude that dual target rapid serial visual presentation can be used as an attention‐based measurement to differentiate sexual preference in men. Limitations and the applicability in the field of measuring sexual preference were discussed.