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Development of a Cued Pro- and Antisaccade Paradigm: An Indirect Measure to Explore Automatic Components of Sexual Interest

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Abstract

We developed a cued pro- and antisaccade paradigm (CPAP) to explore automatic components of sexual interest. Heterosexual participants (n = 32 women, n = 25 men) had to perform fast eye movements toward and away from sexually relevant or irrelevant stimuli across a congruent (i.e., prosaccade toward sexually relevant stimuli, antisaccade away from sexually irrelevant stimuli) and an incongruent condition (i.e., prosaccade toward sexually irrelevant stimuli, antisaccade away from sexually relevant stimuli). We hypothesized that pro- and antisaccade performance would be influenced by the sexual interest-specific relevance of the presented stimulus (i.e., nude female or male stimulus) and the instructed task (i.e., pro- or antisaccade) and, thus, differ meaningfully between conditions. Results for prosaccades toward sexually relevant stimuli in the congruent condition showed that error rates were lower and latencies were shorter compared with prosaccades toward sexually irrelevant stimuli in the incongruent condition, but only for male participants. In addition, error rates for antisaccades away from sexually irrelevant stimuli in the congruent condition were lower than for antisaccades away from sexually relevant stimuli in the incongruent condition, for both female and male participants. Latencies of antisaccades, however, did not differ between conditions. In comparison with established indirect sexual interest paradigms, the CPAP benefits from measuring highly automated processes less prone to deliberate control. To this end, the CPAP could be applied to explore the interplay of early automatic and deliberate components of sexual information processing.

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Notes

  1. Sexual orientation was assessed with the Kinsey-scale (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953). Only participants with scores ≤1 were included as exclusively heterosexual (score = 0) or predominantly heterosexual (score = 1).

  2. Effects of sexual activity, neuroticism, and executive capacities (five participants had to be excluded as outliers) were examined in ANCOVAs for each model, but revealed no significant effects of the control variables (ps > .07). Thus, control variables were dropped from all further analyses for reasons of parsimony.

  3. Effects of prosaccade latencies left the reported results virtually unaltered by excluding outliers.

  4. The inclusion of the outlier for antisaccade latencies revealed a significant main effect of condition, F(1, 55) = 4.38, p = .041, η² = .07, resulting in longer latencies for incongruent trials. This corroborates sexual orientation-specific effects also on antisaccade latencies in case the outlier was kept in the analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Social and Legal Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111, Bonn, Germany

    Verena A. Oberlader & Rainer Banse

  2. Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111, Bonn, Germany

    Ulrich Ettinger

  3. Department of Psychology, Legal Psychology, Medical School Hamburg, Am Kaiserkai 1, 20457, Hamburg, Germany

    Alexander F. Schmidt

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  1. Verena A. Oberlader
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  2. Ulrich Ettinger
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  3. Rainer Banse
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  4. Alexander F. Schmidt
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Correspondence to Verena A. Oberlader.

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Oberlader, V.A., Ettinger, U., Banse, R. et al. Development of a Cued Pro- and Antisaccade Paradigm: An Indirect Measure to Explore Automatic Components of Sexual Interest. Arch Sex Behav 46, 2377–2388 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0839-7

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