Increases in Emotional Responding Predict Greater Visual Avoidance during a Disgust-Eliciting Task

摘要

Visual avoidance (VA) is movement of the head and body that limits exposure to aversive stimuli. We examined how VA relates to physiological activity and disgust facial behavior in neurologically intact and impaired adults. Greater increase in skin conductance before VA onset predicted greater overall VA in controls, but not in patients. Finding suggests VA may be a normative behavioral response to increased disgust that is impacted by neurodegenerative disease.