Spider fear and covariation bias in children and adolescents

Covariation bias can be defined as phobic people's tendency to overestimate the association between fear-relevant stimuli and negative outcomes. The current article presents two studies that examined this type of cognitive bias in children and adolescents aged 8-16 years. Study 1 was concerned with a thought experiment during which youths (N=150) were asked to imagine that they participated in an experiment during which they had to view a series of pictures showing spiders, guns, and flowers, that were occasionally followed by a negative outcome (i.e., a mild electric shock). Participants were asked to estimate the relation between each type of picture and the negative outcome. The results indicated that youths with higher levels of spider fear displayed a specific tendency to relate spider pictures to a negative outcome. In Study 2, youths (N=220) actually participated in a computer game during which they were confronted with pictures of spiders, guns, and flowers, each of which was equally often followed by a negative (i.e., losing candy), positive (i.e., winning candy), or neutral outcome. After the game, participants had to estimate the relation between each type of picture and various outcomes. It was found that youths with higher levels of spider fear estimated more negative and less positive outcomes in relation to spider pictures. Taken together, these findings provide support for a fear-related covariation bias in youths. Further developmental analyses indicated that this type of cognitive bias seems to be more consistently present among adolescents than among children.     

Danger expectancies, self-efficacy and insight in spider phobia

In the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, (1994) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.) Washington, DC: author) phobic adults and adolescents are said to "recognize that the phobia is excessive or unreasonable" given the actual danger posed by the feared situation. The present study examined perceptions of danger in 15 spider phobic subjects and a matched set of controls before, during and after a spider-avoidance test. When detached from the phobic stimulus, phobic subjects: (1) gave higher estimates of the probability of being bitten than controls did; (2) gave higher estimates of the injuries that would result from being bitten and (3) in line with these first two findings, believed their high levels of anticipated anxiety were more reasonable and appropriate to the demands of the situation than controls did. These findings are inconsistent with the prevailing notion that when detached from the phobic situation patients can accurately evaluate the danger of potential phobic encounters. Instead, the findings suggest that phobic individuals, whether detached or in the presence of the feared object, have relatively limited insight into the irrationality of their fears. In examining the mediation of phobic phenomena, both self-efficacy and danger estimates remained significantly related to the anxiety and avoidance experienced in the spider-avoidance task. Further research designed to experimentally establish the likely causal roles of these two constructs is warranted.     

Fear-relevant selective associations and social anxiety: absence of a positive bias

An illusory correlation paradigm was used to compare high and low socially anxious individuals' initial, on-line and a posteriori covariation estimates between emotional faces and aversive, pleasant and neutral outcomes. Overall, participants demonstrated an initial expectancy bias for aversive outcomes following angry faces, and pleasant outcomes following happy faces. On-line expectancy biases indicated that initial biases were extinguished during the task, with the exception of low socially anxious individuals who continued to over-associate positive social cues with pleasant outcomes. In addition to lacking this protective positive on-line bias, the high social anxiety group reported retrospectively more negative social cues than the low socially anxious group. Findings are discussed in relation to similar evidence from recent interpretive and memory paradigms.     

Emotional responding to fearful and disgusting stimuli in specific phobics

Individuals with small animal and blood-injection-injury (BII) phobias respond to phobia-relevant stimuli with both fear and disgust. However, recent studies suggest that fear is the dominant emotional response in animal phobics whereas disgust is the primary emotional response in BII phobics. The present study examined emotional responding toward pictures of spiders, surgical procedures, and two categories of general disgust elicitors (rotting food and body products) among analogue spider phobics, BII phobics, and nonphobics. Dominant emotional responses to phobia-relevant stimuli clearly differentiated the groups. as spider phobics were more likely to be classified as primarily fearful when rating pictures of spiders (74%), whereas BII phobics were more likely to be classified as primarily disgusted when rating pictures of surgical procedures (78%). Discriminant function analyses revealed that disgust ratings, but not fear ratings, of the phobic pictures were significant predictors of phobic group membership. Both phobic groups were characterized by elevated disgust sensitivity toward video and pictorial general disgust elicitors. Implications and suggestions for continued research examining fearful and disgusting stimuli in specific phobia are outlined.     

Fear and disgust processing during repeated exposure to threat-relevant stimuli in spider phobia

Although disgust plays a significant role in the etiology of spider phobia, there remains a paucity of research examining the role of disgust in the treatment of spider phobia. Spider fearful participants (N = 46) were randomly assigned to a disgust (view vomit images) or neutral activation (view inanimate objects) condition. They were then repeatedly exposed to a videotaped tarantula, during which time their fear, disgust, and physiological levels were assessed repeatedly. Growth curve analyses indicated that repeated exposure led to significant declines in fear and disgust with no statistically significant differences between the two conditions. However, there was marginal evidence for decreased physiological arousal during repeated exposure among spider fearful participants in the disgust activation condition compared to those in the neutral condition. Reduction in disgust during exposure in the disgust activation condition remained significant after controlling for change in fear, whereas change in fear was no longer significant after controlling for change in disgust. However, the opposite pattern of relations between change in fear and disgust was observed in the neutral activation condition. Higher fear and disgust activation during exposure was also associated with higher fear and disgust responding on a subsequent behavioral task and higher spider fear and disgust at 3-month follow-up. Baseline trait disgust propensity also predicted fear and disgust parameters during repeated exposure. The implications of these findings for the role of disgust in the treatment of spider phobia are discussed.     

Reward expectancy promotes generalized increases in attentional bias for rewarding stimuli

Expectations of drug availability increase the magnitude of attentional biases for drug-related cues. However, it is unknown whether these effects are outcome specific, or whether expectation of a specific reinforcer produces a general enhancement of attentional bias for other types of rewarding cues. In the present study, 31 social drinkers completed an eye-tracking task in which attentional bias for alcohol- and chocolate-related cues was assessed while the expectation of receiving alcohol and chocolate was manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis. Participants showed attentional bias for alcohol and chocolate cues (relative to neutral cues) overall. Importantly, these attentional biases for reward cues were magnified when participants expected to receive alcohol and chocolate, but effects were not outcome specific: The expectation of receiving either alcohol or chocolate increased attentional bias for both alcohol and chocolate cues. Results suggest that anticipation of reward produces a general rather than an outcome-specific enhancement of attentional bias for reward-related stimuli.     

Expectancy bias and the persistence of posttraumatic stress

Anxious individuals tend to overestimate the probability that encounters with anxiogenic stimuli (CS) will be followed by aversive consequences (UCS). This study examined whether such (biased) UCS expectancies predict the persistence of PTSD symptoms. A total of 265 soldiers were recruited before a four-month deployment to Iraq in 2004. About 2-5 months after deployment, 171 (65%) soldiers completed self-report scales about adverse events in Iraq and PTSD symptoms, and a UCS expectancy task. In this task, participants were exposed to a series of deployment-related and deployment-unrelated (control) picture stimuli. For each trial, the participants indicated the subjective probability that a particular slide would be followed by an imminent loud noise. Around 15 months after deployment, 130 (76%) soldiers completed surveys about PTSD symptoms again. Only a small group of participants had high levels of PTSD symptoms. Regression analyses showed that the level of PTSD symptoms at 15 months was predicted by earlier PTSD symptoms, but also and independently by an enhanced UCS expectancy to deployment-related stimuli. The findings support the notion that UCS expectancy bias contributes to the persistence of PTSD symptoms.     

Accuracy of retrospective memory and covariation estimation in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Assessment methods relying on biased or inaccurate retrospective recall may distort knowledge about the nature of disorders and lead to faulty clinical inferences. Despite concerns about the accuracy of retrospective recall in general and in particular with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, the accuracy of retrospective recall for one's own symptoms assessed in vivo is unknown in this population. This study used a prospective ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology to create a criterion against which to assess recall accuracy in OCD patients. Although results indicated that patients’ retrospective recall of OCD symptoms was fairly accurate, they consistently overestimated the magnitude of OCD symptom covariation with non-OCD facets (e.g., sleep duration, contemporaneous stress level, etc.). Findings suggest that even when recall of OCD symptoms is accurate, patients may be inaccurate in estimating symptom covariation. The findings have implications for the research, case conceptualization, and assessment of OCD, and may extend to other disorders.     

Recall bias for stimulus and response anxiety words in spider phobics

Abstract

Experiments on memory bias in patients with anxiety disorders have produced inconsistent results. It is suggested that results may depend on whether the words studied relate to anxiety-inducing stimulus features or to the anxiety response. It was predicted, following previous results, that phobic subjects would show diminished recall of stimulus words, but that recall of response words might be enhanced. In fact, for both stimulus and response words, phobics showed better recall of phobia-related words than of control words. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that phobic anxiety is associated with a bias towards recall of phobia-related words. However, it seems likely that phobic anxiety has several potentially conflicting effects on recall, and that this accounts for the inconsistent results in literature.     

Evidence for an encounter expectancy bias in fear of spiders

Whereas research has demonstrated that phobic or fearful individuals overestimate the likelihood of incurring aversive consequences from an encounter with feared stimuli, it has not yet been systematically investigated whether these individuals also overestimate the likelihood (i.e., the frequency) of such encounters. In the current study, spider-fearful and control participants were presented with background information that allowed them to estimate the overall likelihood that different kinds of animals (spiders, snakes, or birds) would be encountered. Spider-fearful participants systematically overestimated the likelihood of encountering a spider with respect to the likelihood of encountering a snake or a bird. No such expectancy bias was observed in control participants. The results thus strengthen our idea that there indeed exist two different types of expectancy bias in high fear and phobia that can be related to different components of the fear response. A conscientious distinction and examination of these two types of expectancy bias are of potential interest for therapeutic applications.     

A disgust mood state causes a negative interpretation bias, but not in the specific domain of body-related concerns

The present study was designed to examine the effects of a disgust mood state on negative interpretation bias, in particular in the domain of body and weight concerns. Participants (N = 120) were randomly assigned to one of four mood induction groups (i.e., disgust, anxiety, happy, and neutral) and were afterwards asked to respond to various types of ambiguous scenarios to index general threat interpretations, negative body-related interpretations, and neutral/positive interpretations. Results demonstrated that both the anxiety and disgust mood induction groups displayed higher levels of negative interpretations of the ambiguous threat scenarios than the neutral and happy groups. However, no evidence was obtained for a negative interpretation bias in the body-related domain for these negative mood groups, and this conclusion was also true for participants scoring high on a scale of eating disorder symptoms. Altogether, these findings suggest that disgust does not play a role in eating pathology by inducing a negative interpretation bias in the specific domain of body and weight concerns.     

Fading vs systematic desensitization in the treatment of snake and spider phobia

Fading, a new technique for the treatment of phobias, was compared to systematic desensitization and a waiting-list control group for clients with snake and spider phobia. The fading technique used slides of the phobic stimulus instead of imagery, and slides of positive scenes capable of arousing a calm positive feeling as anxiety-antagonists. The clients were assessed on different self-report, behavioural and physiological measures before and after treatment. The clients were treated individually and received eight sessions, one per week. The within-group comparisons showed that both the fading and the desensitization group changed significantly on most, of the dependent measures, but the control group did not. The between-group comparisons yielded fewer significancies but on four of the 12 dependent measures both treatment groups were significantly better than the control group, while there were no differences between the fading and desensitization groups.     

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement,hostile attribution bias,and outcome expectancies

This study investigated the relationship between cognitive mechanisms, applied by people to rationalize and justify harmful acts, and engagement in traditional peer and cyber aggression among school children. We examined the contribution of moral disengagement (MD), hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies, and we further explored the individual contribution of each MD mechanism. Our aim was to identify shared and unique cognitive factors of the two forms of aggression. Three hundred and thirty‐nine secondary school children completed self‐report measures that assessed MD, hostile attribution bias, outcome expectancies, and their roles and involvement in traditional and cyber aggression. We found that the MD total score positively related to both forms of peer‐directed aggression. Furthermore, traditional peer aggression positively related to children's moral justification, euphemistic language, displacement of responsibility and outcome expectancies, and negatively associated with hostile attribution bias. Moral justification also related positively to cyber aggression. Cyber aggression and cyber victimization were associated with high levels of traditional peer aggression and victimization, respectively. The results suggest that MD is a common feature of both traditional and cyber peer aggression, but it seems that traditional forms of aggression demand a higher level of rationalization or justification. Moreover, the data suggest that the expectation of positive outcomes from harmful behavior facilitates engagement in traditional peer aggression. The differential contribution of specific cognitive mechanisms indicates the need for future research to elaborate on the current findings, in order to advance theory and inform existing and future school interventions tackling aggression and bullying. Aggr. Behav. 36:81–94, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Recognition bias for critical faces in social phobia: a replication and extension

Studies using linguistic stimuli have provided little support for explicit memory biases among individuals with social phobia (SP). However, using facial stimuli rated on their criticalness, Lundh and Ost (1996) found that individuals with SP recognized more critical than accepting faces, whereas non-anxious controls tended to show the opposite pattern. Since the publication of Lundh and Ost's findings, additional studies using a variety of facial stimuli have produced inconsistent findings (J. Anxiety Disord. 14 (2000) 501; Behav. Res. Ther. 39 (2001) 967). Unfortunately, these inconsistencies are difficult to reconcile given great variation in methods and stimuli. Therefore, we designed a study to replicate and extend the work of Lundh and Ost (Behav. Res. Ther. 34 (1996) 787). Similar to Lundh and Ost, individuals with SP identified a significantly higher proportion of old critical faces as old than did non-anxious controls. Further, extending the work of Lundh and Ost, signal detection analyses revealed group differences on response bias according to face type. Specifically, controls showed a response bias towards indicating that accepting faces were previously seen, whereas individuals with SP did not. Finally, signal detection analyses failed to reveal group differences in the accuracy of memory.     

Experienced disgust causes a negative interpretation bias: a causal role for disgust in anxious psychopathology

This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating the effect of induced disgust on interpretational bias using the homophone spelling task. Four groups of participants experienced a disgust, anxiety, happy or neutral mood induction and then completed the homophone spelling task which requires the participant to interpret ambiguous words presented through headphones. Both the disgust and anxiety groups interpreted significantly more threat/neutral homophones as threat than both the happy and neutral groups; the disgust group also interpreted significantly fewer positive/neutral homophones as positive than the happy group. These findings are consistent with the view that induced disgust causes a negative interpretational bias which is similar to that reported for anxiety. The results could not be interpreted in terms of the disgust induction concurrently raising levels of self-reported anxiety, but could be interpreted in terms of disgust maintaining existing levels of anxiety. The effect of disgust was to facilitate negative interpretations rather than emotional interpretations regardless of valence. These findings provide the basis for a causal role for disgust in anxious psychopathology. Because the effect is a non-specific emotion-congruent one, elevated disgust levels will result in a predisposition to interpret information in a threatening way across a broad range of anxious- and threat-relevant domains.     

Social interpretation bias and generalized social phobia: the influence of developmental experiences

Patients with generalized social phobia (N = 42) and non-phobic community controls (N = 42) engaged in a social interaction with an experimental assistant whose behavior was used to create either a positive or an ambiguous social environment. Participants then rated their own performance and their partner's behavior. As a group, social phobic patients displayed negatively biased self-judgments, but failed to display biased social interpretations. Among the social phobia group, a social developmental history marked by parental hostility was associated with negative interpretations of partner behavior and a history of parental overprotection was associated with less sensitivity to partner behavior. The results supported cognitive models of social phobia, which implicate negative learning experiences in the development of information processing biases.     

Adaptive non-interventional heuristics for covariation detection in causal induction: model comparison and rational analysis

In this article, 41 models of covariation detection from 2 × 2 contingency tables were evaluated against past data in the literature and against data from new experiments. A new model was also included based on a limiting case of the normative phi-coefficient under an extreme rarity assumption, which has been shown to be an important factor in covariation detection (McKenzie & Mikkelsen, 2007) and data selection (Hattori, 2002; Oaksford & Chater, 1994, 2003). The results were supportive of the new model. To investigate its explanatory adequacy, a rational analysis using two computer simulations was conducted. These simulations revealed the environmental conditions and the memory restrictions under which the new model best approximates the normative model of covariation detection in these tasks. They thus demonstrated the adaptive rationality of the new model.     

Interpretation and judgmental biases in social phobia

Previous research demonstrated that social phobia is characterized by content-specific interpretation and judgmental biases. The present study investigated whether this interpretation bias occurs not only in ambiguous, but also in positive and negative social events, and whether social phobic patients (SPs) are more characterized by a judgmental bias in costs than in probability. Besides, we argued that the judgmental bias observed in former studies could also be attributed to accurate estimations of SPs (of, for example, stuttering). Therefore, we assessed judgmental bias by the ratings of probability and costs of a negative evaluation (e.g. ‘people dislike me’) and not, as in previous studies, of negative social events (e.g. ‘stuttering’). SPs (n=228) and normal controls (n=33) were presented social and non-social events ranging from positive to profoundly negative. They ranked four different interpretations on likelihood to assess interpretation bias, and rated the profoundly negative interpretation on probability and cost to assess judgmental bias. SPs demonstrated content-specific interpretation and judgmental biases that also occurred in positive and negative social events. In contrast with expectations, SPs were characterized by a judgmental bias in both costs and probability.     

The interpretation of negative social events in social phobia: changes during treatment and relationship to outcome

Catastrophic interpretations of negative social events are considered to be an important factor underlying social phobia. This study investigated the extent to which these interpretative biases change during cognitive-behavioural treatment for social phobia, and examined whether within-treatment changes in different types of interpretations predict longer-term treatment outcome. Results showed that treatment was associated with decreases in various types of maladaptive interpretations of negative social events, but that social phobia symptoms 3 months after treatment were independently predicted only by within-treatment reductions in the degree to which individuals personally believed that negative social events were indicative of unfavourable self-characteristics. These findings are discussed in relation to cognitive models of the maintenance of social anxiety, and implications for treatment are considered.     

Attentional bias and emotional reactivity as predictors and moderators of behavioral treatment for social phobia

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a well-established treatment for anxiety disorders, and evidence is accruing for the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Little is known about factors that relate to treatment outcome overall (predictors), or who will thrive in each treatment (moderators). The goal of the current project was to test attentional bias and negative emotional reactivity as moderators and predictors of treatment outcome in a randomized controlled trial comparing CBT and ACT for social phobia. Forty-six patients received 12 sessions of CBT or ACT and were assessed for self-reported and clinician-rated symptoms at baseline, post treatment, 6, and 12 months. Attentional bias significantly moderated the relationship between treatment group and outcome with patients slow to disengage from threatening stimuli showing greater clinician-rated symptom reduction in CBT than in ACT. Negative emotional reactivity, but not positive emotional reactivity, was a significant overall predictor with patients high in negative emotional reactivity showing the greatest self-reported symptom reduction.