Lexical decision task performance in blood-fearful and spider-fearful individuals

University undergraduates were pre-screened for blood fearfulness (fear of blood, n = 25), spider fearfulness (fear of spiders, n = 30), or non-fearfulness (n = 23) and presented with blood, spider, neutral, positive, and pseudoword (pronouncable nonword, like flirp) stimuli in a lexical decision task (LDT). Use of the LDT in phobic individuals may provide insight about how these individuals process, store, and ultimately use information and, in turn, how processing this information affects their day-to-day activities. Words were responded to faster than pseudowords. No group main or interaction effects emerged, and all groups responded faster and more accurately to spider words then blood words and neutral words. Results suggest that the single-word lexical decision task may not be sensitive in detecting lexical processing biases toward threat in these groups. Results also suggest that paradigms that are based on high-level, semantic-conceptual information processing (like lexical decision) are not sensitive enough to detect group differences in blood and spider phobias. Any array of perceptual and conceptual tasks taken together may be needed to detect these differences.     

Lexical decision task performance in blood-fearful and spider-fearful individuals

University undergraduates were pre-screened for blood fearfulness (fear of blood, n = 25), spider fearfulness (fear of spiders, n = 30), or non-fearfulness (n = 23) and presented with blood, spider, neutral, positive, and pseudoword (pronouncable nonword, like flirp) stimuli in a lexical decision task (LDT). Use of the LDT in phobic individuals may provide insight about how these individuals process, store, and ultimately use information and, in turn, how processing this information affects their day-to-day activities. Words were responded to faster than pseudowords. No group main or interaction effects emerged, and all groups responded faster and more accurately to spider words then blood words and neutral words. Results suggest that the single-word lexical decision task may not be sensitive in detecting lexical processing biases toward threat in these groups. Results also suggest that paradigms that are based on high-level, semantic-conceptual information processing (like lexical decision) are not sensitive enough to detect group differences in blood and spider phobias. Any array of perceptual and conceptual tasks taken together may be needed to detect these differences.     

Cognitive Bias for Pictorial and Linguistic Threat Cues in Children

The present study was designed to test the conditions under which threat-related cognitive bias can be observed in anxious children. Measures of cognitive bias for threatening words and pictures were obtained from spider fearful children (N = 55) and non-fearful children (N = 58) aged 8–11 in the first experiment, and from spider fearful children (N = 44), and two control groups (N = 41; N = 36) aged 8 in the second experiment. Cognitive bias was assessed by the emotional Stroop task. In line with our previous findings, all children aged 8 showed a bias for spider words, but not for spider pictures. However, a relation between spider fear and bias was observed when age was taken into account: bias for spider words decreased with age in the non-fearful children whereas this bias maintained in the fearful group. This differential age effect too replicated earlier findings (Kindt, Bierman, & Brosschot, 1997). It is suggested that a bias for threat words is a normal characteristic in children aged 8. During development, normal children learn to inhibit this processing bias, whilst fearful children fail to learn this ability.     

How Distinctive are ADHD and RD? Results of a Double Dissociation Study

The nature of the comorbidity between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Reading Disability (RD) was examined using a double dissociation design. Children were between 8 and 12 years of age and entered into four groups: ADHD only (n = 24), ADHD+RD (n = 29), RD only (n = 41) and normal controls (n = 26). In total, 120 children participated in the study; 38 girls and 82 boys. Both ADHD and RD were associated with impairments in inhibition and lexical decision, although inhibition and lexical decision were more severely impaired in RD than in ADHD. Visuospatial working memory deficits were specific to children with only ADHD. It is concluded that there was overlap on lexical decision and to a lesser extent on inhibition between ADHD and RD. In ADHD, impairments were dependent on IQ, which suggest that the overlap in lexical decision and inhibition is different in origin for ADHD and RD. The ADHD only group was specifically characterized by deficits in visuospatial working memory. Hence, no double dissociation between ADHD and RD was found on executive functioning and lexical decision.     

Depth of processing and recall of threat material in fearful and nonfearful individuals

Abstract

Although many studies have examined the nature of memory distortions in anxious individuals, few have considered biases in specific memory processes, such as encoding or retrieval. To investigate whether the presentation of threat material facilitates encoding biases, spider fearful (n=63), blood fearful (n=73), and nonfearful (n=75) participants encoded spider related, blood related, and neutral words as a function of three levels of processing (i.e., structural, semantic, and self referent). Participants subsequently completed either a free recall or a recognition task. All participants demonstrated a partial depth of processing effect, such that they recalled more words encoded in the self referent condition than in the other two conditions, but groups did not differ in their recall of stimuli as a function of word type. Relative to participants in the other groups, spider fearful participants had fewer spider related intrusions in the recall condition, and they made fewer errors in responding to structural and semantic encoding questions when spider related words were presented. These results contribute to an increasingly large body of literature suggesting that anxious individuals are not characterized by a memory bias toward threat, and they raise the possibility that individuals with spider fears process threat-relevant information differently than individuals with blood fears.     

Depth of processing and recall of threat material in fearful and nonfearful individuals

Although many studies have examined the nature of memory distortions in anxious individuals, few have considered biases in specific memory processes, such as encoding or retrieval. To investigate whether the presentation of threat material facilitates encoding biases, spider fearful (n=63), blood fearful (n=73), and nonfearful (n=75) participants encoded spider related, blood related, and neutral words as a function of three levels of processing (i.e., structural, semantic, and self referent). Participants subsequently completed either a free recall or a recognition task. All participants demonstrated a partial depth of processing effect, such that they recalled more words encoded in the self referent condition than in the other two conditions, but groups did not differ in their recall of stimuli as a function of word type. Relative to participants in the other groups, spider fearful participants had fewer spider related intrusions in the recall condition, and they made fewer errors in responding to structural and semantic encoding questions when spider related words were presented. These results contribute to an increasingly large body of literature suggesting that anxious individuals are not characterized by a memory bias toward threat, and they raise the possibility that individuals with spider fears process threat-relevant information differently than individuals with blood fears.     

Examining attentional biases underlying trait anxiety in younger and older adults

Previous research has not adequately assessed the independent contributions of component attentional processes to anxiety-linked biases. MacLeod and Sadler developed a novel, lexical decision task using negative and neutral word stimuli, to enable the independent measurement of attentional engagement and disengagement. Their results suggest that anxiety-linked attentional biases are associated with facilitated attentional engagement with negative information. The present study aimed to determine the replicability of these findings, with two important extensions. First, this study included positive word stimuli in the lexical decision task, to determine whether anxiety-linked attentional biases exist only towards negative information, or toward emotionally arousing information in general. Second, this study explored age-related differences in anxiety-linked attentional biases. Younger (N=32) and older adults (N=32) with both high and low trait anxiety completed the lexical decision task. The results suggest that heightened anxiety may be associated with a deficit in engaging with positive words. No age-related differences in anxiety-linked attentional biases were apparent.     

The role of fear and expectancies in capture of covert attention by spiders

Fear-related stimuli are often prioritized during visual selection but it remains unclear whether capture by salient objects is more likely to occur when individuals fear those objects. In this study, participants with high and low fear of spiders searched for a circle while on some trials a completely irrelevant fear-related (spider) or neutral distractor (butterfly/leaf) was presented simultaneously in the display. Our results show that when you fear spiders and you are not sure whether a spider is going to be present, then any salient distractor (i.e., a butterfly) grabs your attention, suggesting that mere expectation of a spider triggered compulsory monitoring of all irrelevant stimuli. However, neutral stimuli did not grab attention when high spider fearful people knew that a spider could not be present during a block of trials, treating the neutral stimuli just as the low spider fearful people do. Our results show that people that fear spiders inspect potential spider-containing locations in a compulsory fashion even though directing attention to this location is completely irrelevant for the task. Reduction of capture can only be accomplished when people that fear spiders do not expect a spider to be present.     

Mechanisms of visual threat detection in specific phobia

People with anxiety or stress-related disorders attend differently to threat-relevant compared with non-threat stimuli, yet the temporal mechanisms of differential allocation of attention are not well understood. We investigated two independent mechanisms of temporal processing of visual threat by comparing spider-phobic and non-fearful participants using a rapid serial visual presentation task. Consistent with prior literature, spider phobics, but not non-fearful controls, displayed threat-specific facilitated detection of spider stimuli relative to negative stimuli and neutral stimuli. Further, signal detection analyses revealed that facilitated threat detection in spider-phobic participants was driven by greater sensitivity to threat stimulus features and a trend towards a lower threshold for detecting spider stimuli. However, phobic participants did not display reliably slowed temporal disengagement from threat-relevant stimuli. These findings advance our understanding of threat feature processing that might contribute to the onset and maintenance of symptoms in specific phobia and disorders that involve visual threat information more generally.     

The Effects of Hurricane Katrina on Females with a Pre-Existing Fear of Storms

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of Hurricane Katrina on those with preexisting storm fear. Participants were divided into two groups, those with a fear of storms and control participants with no reported fears of any specific stimuli. Differences were examined on measures of exposure to and distress from trauma, fear, coping self-efficacy, and demographic variables. The participants were 62 female undergraduate college students who completed an online survey examining the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Despite no differences in the overall occurrence of trauma between the two groups, storm-fearful participants reported significantly more overall distress from their exposure when compared to the non-fearful participants. Those with storm-fears also reported significantly poorer coping self-efficacy following the storm than those who were not fearful. Overall, individuals with a fear of storms reported experiencing greater psychological impact and poorer coping self-efficacy from the same degree of storm exposure.     

A pictorial version of the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task: sensitivity to generally affective and phobia-relevant stimuli in high and low spider fearful individuals

This study assessed whether a pictorial, rather than a verbal, Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST: De Houwer, 2003) is, 1) sensitive to the affective valence of normatively positive, neutral, and negative pictures, 2) sensitive to interindividual differences pertaining to fear-relevant affective associations, and 3) a valid predictor for strategic and/or reflexive fear responses. High (n = 35) and low (n = 35) spider fearful individuals completed an EAST comprising of universal positive, negative, neutral, and spider pictures. The pictorial EAST was sensitive to normatively valenced stimuli, tended to differentiate between high and low fearful individuals with respect to spider pictures, and showed independent predictive validity for avoidance behavior.     

Well‐being and the accessibility of pleasant and unpleasant concepts

The trait–congruency hypothesis predicts that persons high in positive or negative trait affect more readily process pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, respectively. In two studies, participants were administered measures of personality and affect. Moreover, a yes/no lexical decision task with pleasant, unpleasant and neutral words was administered in Study 1, whereas a go/no‐go task was used in Study 2. Several methods to increase reliabilities of differences in reaction times are explored. Correlations of measures of personality and trait affect with decision times were mostly consistent with the trait–congruency hypothesis, particularly for decision times in the go/no‐go task that measured individual differences in valence‐specific decision times more reliably. The findings suggest that trait‐related concept accessibility is one source of trait congruity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

I am going to gag: Disgust cognitions in spider and blood–injury–injection fears

There is mounting evidence that disgust plays an important role in certain anxiety disorders, yet little is known about disgust's cognitive component. The current study introduces a measure of cognitions associated with disgust and contamination to assess the role of disgust-specific primary and secondary appraisals in phobic responding. A multi-modal assessment of blood–injury–injection (BII) and spider phobia was conducted using BII (N=29) and spider (N=30) fearful groups, and a non-fearful control group (N=30). The Disgust Cognitions scale showed good reliability and validity, and distinguished among the groups. For example, relative to the other groups, the spider fear group reported higher disgust cognitions following presentation of a live spider, whereas the BII Fear group reported higher disgust cognitions following a surgery video. Moreover, the scale was associated with multiple phobic indicators (behavioural avoidance, subjective distress, symptom endorsement), suggesting cognitions may be critical to understanding how disgust contributes to anxiety disorders.     

Some animal specific fears are more specific than others: Evidence from attention and emotion measures

Using a visual search methodology we investigated the effect of feared animal stimuli on attention. Our results confirmed the important role of emotion on attention. All participants detected fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) faster than neutral (mushrooms) ones against a background of fruits. In addition, spider fearful participants were sensitized specifically to detect their feared stimulus (spiders), compared to their fear-relevant but non-feared (snakes) and neutral stimuli. However, for participants fearful of snakes there was no significant difference in detection latencies between the feared (snakes) and the fear-relevant but non-feared animal stimuli (spiders). The results from the attention task were mirrored in the emotional ratings, which showed that spider fear was highly specific, whereas snake fear was associated with a more generalized enhanced evaluation of all negative stimuli.     

Associations of Youth and Adulthood Body-Mass Index and Waist-Hip Ratio with Attachment Styles and Dimensions

The current cross-sectional study examined whether body-mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio are associated with adult attachment. Participants were 1,570 men and women participating in Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study. BMI was measured in youth and in adulthood and waist-hip ratio in adulthood. A single measure of attachment style was conducted when participants were aged 24–39 years. In age and sex adjusted models, youth BMI (Beta = .066, p = .008), adulthood BMI (Beta = .069, p = .007) and waist-hip ratio (Beta = .082, p = .016) were associated with fearful attachment. The associations remained significant when education and relationship status were adjusted for. Age adjusted association between adulthood waist-hip ratio and preoccupied attachment was found in men (Beta = .132, p = .002). The association was not essentially changed by additionally adjusting for education and relationship status, and including fearful attachment in the model. Furthermore, associations for attachment dimensions were also found. These results suggest that in addition to previously reported negative effects of higher BMI on physical health, higher BMI might have negative associations with psychological functioning as well. Furthermore, our results imply that physical appearance might be associated with attachment style in adulthood.     

Attentional Performance in Children and Adolescents with Tic Disorder and Co-Occurring Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: New Insights from a 2 × 2 Factorial Design Study

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of both tic disorder (TD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on attentional functions. N = 96 children and adolescents participated in the study, including n = 21 subjects with TD, n = 23 subjects with ADHD, n = 25 subjects with TD+ADHD, and n = 27 controls. Attentional performance was tested based on four computerized attention tasks (sustained attention, divided attention, go/nogo and set shifting). The effect of TD as well as ADHD on attentional performance was tested using a 2 × 2 factorial approach. A diagnosis of TD had no negative impact on attentional functions but was associated with improved performance in the set shifting task. By contrast, regardless of a diagnosis of TD, subjects with ADHD were found to perform worse in the sustained attention, divided attention and go/nogo task. No interaction effect between the factors TD and ADHD was revealed for any of the attention measures. Our results add to findings from other areas of research, showing that in subjects with TD and ADHD, ADHD psychopathology is often the main source of impairment, whereas a diagnosis of TD has little or no impact on neuropsychological performance in most cases and even seems to be associated with adaptive mechanisms.     

The Effect of d-Cycloserine on Subliminal Cue Exposure in Spider Fearful Individuals

Research on d-cycloserine (DCS) has demonstrated a significant effect on symptom reduction in human studies that utilized conventional exposure-based approaches. Recent studies have offered promising results for targeting fears through subliminal paradigms. In this double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled study, 45 spider fearful individuals received DCS or placebo pills prior to completing a subliminal cue exposure task to images of spiders. Participants completed self-report questionnaires and a behavioral approach task to a live caged tarantula. After repeated exposure to subliminal spider cues, participants in the DCS group reported a greater reduction in disgust than individuals in the placebo group. No difference was observed in fear ratings. These findings suggest that DCS augments the reduction in disgust in spider fearful subjects after subliminal exposure to spider cues.     

The use of stimulus dimensions in judgement making in spider fearful and nonfearful individuals

This study uses a multidimensional scaling approach to investigate the hypothesis that spider fearful individuals give priority to a threat-safety dimension when making judgments. The results show that when making judgments about stimuli, spider fearful individuals (1) placed significantly greater comparative weighting on a threat-relevant dimension than on a non-emotive dimension (colour), and (2) tended to rate threatening pairs of stimuli and safe pairs of stimuli as more similar than did the nonfearful group. This prioritised dimensional processing suggests a mechanism by which phobics can exhibit what initially appear to be paradoxical tendencies to give priority to both threat and safety information.     

Masked nonword repetition effects in yes/no and go/no-go lexical decision: A test of the evidence accumulation and deadline accounts

The pattern of masked repetition priming effects for word and nonword targets differs across tasks: Maskedpriming effects in lexical decision occur for positive responses (i.e., words), but not for negative responses (nonwords), whereas masked-priming effects in the cross-case same-different task occur for positive responses (same), but not for negative responses (different)—regardless of lexical status. Here, we examined whether masked nonword priming effects are greater when the task involves an active go response to nonwords than when it involves the standard yes/no procedure in lexical decision. The obtained masked repetition priming effect for nonwords was of similar size in yes/no and go/no-go tasks. This finding is compatible with accounts of nonword priming that posit that nonword responses are produced by actively accumulating evidence for the nonword alternative in yes/no and go/no-go procedures, whereas it is inconsistent with the assumption of a deadline for no responses in the yes/no task.     

Face Emotion Processing in Depressed Children and Adolescents with and without Comorbid Conduct Disorder

Studies of adults with depression point to characteristic neurocognitive deficits, including differences in processing facial expressions. Few studies have examined face processing in juvenile depression, or taken account of other comorbid disorders. Three groups were compared: depressed children and adolescents with conduct disorder (n = 23), depressed children and adolescents without conduct disorder (n = 29) and children and adolescents without disorder (n = 37). A novel face emotion processing experiment presented faces with ‘happy’, ‘sad’, ‘angry’, or ‘fearful’ expressions of varying emotional intensity using morphed stimuli. Those with depression showed no overall or specific deficits in facial expression recognition accuracy. Instead, they showed biases affecting processing of low-intensity expressions, more often perceiving these as sad. In contrast, non-depressed controls more often misperceived low intensity negative emotions as happy. There were no differences between depressed children and adolescents with and without conduct disorder, or between children with comorbid depression/conduct disorder and controls. Face emotion processing biases rather than deficits appear to distinguish depressed from non-depressed children and adolescents.