{"id":2447,"date":"2014-07-18T18:46:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T23:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2447"},"modified":"2014-07-18T18:49:21","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T23:49:21","slug":"measuring-anxiety-with-optical-illusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/measuring-anxiety-with-optical-illusions\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring anxiety with optical illusions<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2421\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/journal.pone_.0099902.g001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2421\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2421\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/journal.pone_.0099902.g001-300x240.jpg\" alt=\"Animated stick figures that can be perceived as walking away (less hostile) or toward (more hostile) the viewer can be used to provide insight into anxiety. (Photo credit: Heenan A, Troje NF (2014))\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/journal.pone_.0099902.g001-300x240.jpg 300w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/journal.pone_.0099902.g001.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2421\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Animated stick figures that can be perceived as walking away (less hostile) or toward (more hostile) the viewer can be used to provide insight into anxiety. (Photo credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0099902;jsessionid=D4C9C689E1BC360237E3DA7DE3CDA2F7\">Heenan A, Troje NF (2014)<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A classic optical illusion has provided insight into how anxiety influences our view of the world. Researchers used animated stick figures to assess participants\u2019 perceptions.\u00a0These figures have no depth, allowing them to\u00a0be perceived as either walking toward the viewer (i.e. more hostile) or away (less hostile). <\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Participants who had completed an anxiety reduction task (breathing exercises similar to those used in yoga) perceived the stick figures to be walking away more often than those asked to perform a control task. A second experiment showed that exercise also reduces this facing-the-viewer bias, possibly because physical activity helps relieve anxiety.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a style=\"color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.biomotionlab.ca\/Demos\/BioMotionLab2.swf\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> to see a demo of the optical illusion<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0099902;jsessionid=D4C9C689E1BC360237E3DA7DE3CDA2F7\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0<em>PLoS ONE<span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/em>on\u00a0<strong>July 2, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Adam Heenan, Queen\u2019s University,\u00a0Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Nikolaus Troje, Queen\u2019s University, Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><em><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A classic optical illusion has provided insight into how anxiety influences our view of the world. Researchers used animated stick figures to assess participants\u2019 perceptions.\u00a0These figures have no depth, allowing them to\u00a0be perceived as either walking toward the viewer (i.e. more hostile) or away (less hostile). Participants who had completed an anxiety reduction task (breathing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1980,1647,50,1508],"class_list":["post-2447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-anxiety","tag-human-behaviour","tag-ontario","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/journal.pone_.0099902.g001.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-Dt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2451,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions\/2451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}