Acquisition of phobias and anxiety response patterns in clinical patients

The ways in which phobic patients (N = 106; animal-, social- and claustrophobics) acquired their phobias were investigated in the present study. The results showed that a large majority (58%) of the patients attributed their phobias to conditioning experiences, while 17% recalled vicarious experiences, 10% instructions/information and 15% could not recall any specific onset circumstances. There was no clearcut relationship between the ways of acquisition and anxiety components (subjective, behavioral, physiological), nor did the conditioning and indirectly acquired phobias differ in severity. However, some interesting trends emerged in the data, showing that animal phobics who recalled conditioning experiences to a larger extent also responded physiologically. For patients with indirect onset experiences (for all three types of phobias) the reverse was true, i.e. they responded to a larger extent in a cognitive-subjective way, rather than with increased physiological arousal.     

Pavlovian extinction,phobias, and the limits of the cognitive paradigm

The slow or total lack of decrease in some autonomic responses during extinction in aversive conditioning and concomitant verbalizations of fear have remained a problem for learning theories and psychophysiology. Removal of the aversive stimulus should result in a rapid decrement in responding, as it does in cognitive and somatic systems. In laboratory analogues of phobia and clinical neurosis, however, such decreases do not occur in some autonomic responses and reported fear. In this article three areas of research are presented in which dissociations occur between cognitive and autonomie responses: 1) relational learning, 2) phobia, and 3) incubation. The data indicate that there are some important distinctions to be made concerning the properties of different psychological and physiological systems. These distinctions pertain to the differences between cognitive and noncognitive systems, between the two branches of the ANS, and between acquisition and extinction processes. These distinctions lead to a number of hypotheses concerning dissociations between response systems and have important implications for the understanding and treatment of neurosis.     

Predicting academic success with the Big 5 rated from different points of view: Self‐rated,other rated and faked

Self‐ratings of personality predict academic success above general intelligence. The present study replicated these findings and investigated the increment of other‐ratings or intentionally distorted self‐ratings. Participants (N = 145) had to compile a personality questionnaire twice. First they were given neutral instructions. The second time they were asked to imagine a specific applicant setting. Furthermore, two peers rated each participant. Additionally, verbal, numerical and figural reasoning scores were obtained. Grades on a statistics exam obtained 2 months later served as the criterion. Results replicated prior findings and showed incremental validity for self‐ and other‐rated personality, which was stable after controlling for intelligence. Faking had no impact on the domain‐score level, but results on the facet‐score level were less encouraging. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mechanisms of synesthesia: cognitive and physiological constraints

Synesthesia is a conscious experience of systematically induced sensory attributes that are not experienced by most people under comparable conditions. Recent findings from cognitive psychology, functional brain imaging and electrophysiology have shed considerable light on the nature of synesthesia and its neurocognitive underpinnings. These cognitive and physiological findings are discussed with respect to a neuroanatomical framework comprising hierarchically organized cortical sensory pathways. We advance a neurobiological theory of synesthesia that fits within this neuroanatomical framework.     

Effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy on the signs,symptoms and clinical consequences of premature ejaculation

The purpose of this research was to assess the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on the signs, symptoms, and clinical‐sexual consequences of premature ejaculation, including sexual esteem, sexual anxiety, sexual depression, sexual fear, and sexual satisfaction of patients and their wives. Fifteen patients with premature ejaculation were selected and received cognitive behavioral therapy of eight to 12 sessions. Finally, the data collected from 12 patients were analyzed using paired t‐tests. The results of the analysis showed that all of the variables changed after the treatment. All of the changes were statistically significant with a tendency towards improvement. CBT can be a more popular and effective treatment provided to patients suffering from premature ejaculation.     

Habituation of cognitive and physiological arousal and social anxiety

This study examined differences in habituation between high and low socially anxious Ss. Participants gave three impromptu speeches, each separated by a brief rest interval. Skin conductance and heart rate were monitored during the speeches. Following each speech participants completed self-ratings of nervousness, heart rate, and palmar sweat activity as well as a modified Social Interaction Self Statement Test. Low anxious controls showed significant reduction of negative expectations and self-reported nervousness, heart rate, and sweat activity across the three trials. Actual heart rate of low-anxious subjects also decreased significantly across trials. In contrast, high anxious subjects did not evidence significant decreases in any of the above measures of anxiety and stress across the three trials. Skin conductance measures increased across trials for both groups, but increased more for the high anxious group than low-anxious controls. Results indicate that high anxiety participants are slow to decrease cognitive and autonomic responsiveness to stressful social situations.     

The relationship between cognitive inhibition and psychotic symptoms

Cognitive models of schizophrenia have highlighted deficits of inhibitory attentional processes as central to the disorder. This has been investigated using "negative priming" (S. P. Tipper, 1985), with schizophrenia patients showing a reduction of negative priming in a number of studies. This study attempted to replicate these findings, but studied psychotic symptoms rather than the broad diagnostic category of schizophrenia. Psychotic individuals exhibiting positive symptoms were compared with asymptomatic psychiatric patients and with a normal control group. As predicted, the symptomatic group failed to show the usual negative priming effect, which was present in the asymptomatic and normal groups. A modest but significant correlation was found between negative priming and delusions. Neither diagnosis, nor affective or negative symptoms, nor chronicity, nor medication, was related to negative priming. These data replicate previous findings that positive symptoms are related to a reduction in cognitive inhibition, although considerable variability was observed among the psychotic patients.     

Anxiety management--the marriage of physiological and cognitive variables.

Consideration is given to recent behavioural approaches to the management of anxiety responses. Emphasis is placed on the importance of both the physiological and cognitive characteristics of the anxious patient. It is argued that biofeedback may be a useful tool to facilitate changes in the physiological and cognitive systems. Finally, three case studies are presented and discussed in relation to the multimodal approach.     

The relation between cognitive deficits and schizophrenic symptoms]

Reasons are given for explicitly derived requirement that experimental-psychological investigations of cognitive deficits of schizophrenics should be related to their clinical symptoms. Results which verify this relations prove to be relevant for prognosis, therapy and rehabilitation of schizophrenic patients.     

Perceptual and cognitive biases in individuals with body dysmorphic disorder symptoms

Given the extreme focus on perceived physical defects in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), we expected that perceptual and cognitive biases related to physical appearance would be associated with BDD symptomology. To examine these hypotheses, participants (N=70) high and low in BDD symptoms completed tasks assessing visual perception and cognition. As expected, there were significant group differences in self-relevant, but not other-relevant, cognitive biases. Perceptual bias results were mixed, with some evidence indicating that individuals high (versus low) in BDD symptoms literally see themselves in a less positive light. Further, individuals high in BDD symptoms failed to demonstrate a normative self-enhancement bias. Overall, this research points to the importance of assessing both cognitive and perceptual biases associated with BDD symptoms, and suggests that visual perception may be influenced by non-visual factors.     

A cognitive and an affective dimension of alexithymia in six languages and seven populations

The Dutch Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) is translated into various languages. The aim of this research was to establish the factor structure of subscales on seven cultural groups. The BVAQ consists of five subscales of eight items each: Emotionalising, Fantasising, Analysing, Identifying, and Verbalising emotions. The BVAQ was administered to a group of Dutch students (n=375), a group of English students (n=175), a group of Australian students, university employees and visitors (n=216), a group of French speaking Belgian students (n=175), a group of Italian people (n=791; a mix of various clinical groups), a group of Polish people (n=427; also a mix of various clinical groups) and a group of Russian people (n=141; general population). The hypothesised two-factor structure of an affective alexithymia dimension (Emotionalising, Fantasising) and a cognitive alexithymia dimension (Insight and Verbalising), with “Analysing emotions” loading on both factors, was clearly supported by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Both orthogonal and oblique principal components analyses (PCA), without restriction concerning the number of factors, provided the same two-factor solution in all groups explaining between 55% and 64% of the variance. Oblique rotation further demonstrated that the correlations between these two factors were low in all populations. The combined CFA and PCA results, therefore, indicated that a model with two independent factors has to be preferred over the model assuming two correlated factors.     

Individual differences in cognitive control over emotional material modulate cognitive biases linked to depressive symptoms

Deficient cognitive control over emotional material and cognitive biases are important mechanisms underlying depression, but the interplay between these emotionally distorted cognitive processes in relation to depressive symptoms is not well understood. This study investigated the relations among deficient cognitive control of emotional information (i.e. inhibition, shifting, and updating difficulties), cognitive biases (i.e. negative attention and interpretation biases), and depressive symptoms. Theory-driven indirect effect models were constructed, hypothesising that deficient cognitive control over emotional material predicts depressive symptoms through negative attention and interpretation biases. Bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that deficient inhibitory control over negative material was related to negative attention bias which in turn predicted a congruent bias in interpretation and subsequently depressive symptoms. Both shifting and updating impairments in response to negative material had an indirect effect on depression severity through negative interpretation bias. No evidence was found for direct effects of deficient cognitive control over emotional material on depressive symptoms. These findings may help to formulate an integrated understanding of the cognitive foundations of depressive symptoms.     

Relationships between anger, symptoms, and cognitive factors in OCD checkers

The purpose of this study was to examine whether individuals diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with primary checking compulsions report higher levels of trait anger and anger expression compared with a student control group, and whether trait anger and anger expression are correlated with specific beliefs and interpretations that are common among individuals who compulsively check. A group of individuals with OCD reporting significant checking compulsions (n=33) and a group of undergraduate students (n=143) completed a questionnaire package that included measures of trait anger and anger expression, as well as measures of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and beliefs. The compulsive checking group reported greater trait anger, though not greater anger expression, than the student control group. Furthermore, beliefs concerning perfectionism and intolerance of uncertainty were positively correlated with anger expression and trait anger among compulsive checkers but not among the student control group. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioural treatments for and models of compulsive checking in OCD.     

The hardy personality: cognitive and physiological responses to evaluative threat

Hardy persons are hypothesized to be resistant to stress-induced illness, because of their adaptive cognitive style and a subsequently reduced level of physiological arousal. We assessed the cognitive and physiological responses of high and low hardy male undergraduates to a challenging task under high and low evaluative threat. As predicted, hardy subjects endorsed more positive self-statements than did low hardy subjects in the high threat condition. High hardy subjects also reported fewer negative self-statements overall, but this was attributable to the overlap of measures of hardiness and neuroticism. Hardy subjects displayed marginally lower arousal while waiting for the task to begin, but this finding did not approach significance when neuroticism was controlled. Hardy subjects also had higher levels of systolic blood pressure, perhaps because of their active coping efforts. Results support the hypothesized hardy cognitive style but raise questions about the type and timing of organismic strain linking hardiness and health.