Training children to approach or avoid novel animals: Effects on self-reported attitudes and fear beliefs and information-seeking behaviors

We examined the effects of training to approach or avoid novel animals on fear-related responses in children. Ninety-nine primary school children (9–12 years old) were instructed to repeatedly move a manikin toward or away from pictures of novel animals. The training produced more positive self-reported attitudes for the animal that was repeatedly approached and more negative attitudes for the animal that was repeatedly avoided. After the training, children reported more fear of the avoided animal than of the approached animal. Interestingly, children showed a training-congruent confirmation bias effect on an information-seeking task. That is, they displayed a tendency to seek more positive information about the approached animal, whereas they were inclined to search for more negative information about the avoided animal. No significant training effects were observed on implicit attitudes. The finding that a simple approach-avoidance training influences children’s fear-related responses and leads to biased information-seeking behaviors lends support to general theories of fear acquisition in children as well as to models that try to explain the intergenerational transmission of anxiety.     

The effects of sex and fear level of subjects on the snake approach behaviour of dyads

Dyads, differing in composition in terms of sex and fear level of subjects, were video-recorded whilst interacting with a harmless snake. Approach measures were taken for all subjects in the form of latency of first touch, percentage time in contact with snake and intensity of interaction from no touching at all through to picking up. As hypothesized, ‘fearless’ subjects showed more approach than ‘fearful’, with latency giving the most significant difference. Male and female scores were not significantly different on any measure, although there was a significant interaction on latency between sex and fear level, due to the performance of fearful females. Contrary to hypothesis there was no evidence that males regardless of fear level showed any more approach when paired with a female partner. There was evidence in line with hypothesis that fearless females showed more approach when paired with other females. Fearless males showed more approach when paired with fearful partners and fearful females when paired with fearless partners. These results are discussed in terms of the literature on the laboratory study of human fear and therapeutic modeling.     

Virtual reality for the psychophysiological assessment of phobic fear: responses during virtual tunnel driving

An overall assessment of phobic fear requires not only a verbal self-report of fear but also an assessment of behavioral and physiological responses. Virtual reality can be used to simulate realistic (phobic) situations and therefore should be useful for inducing emotions in a controlled, standardized way. Verbal and physiological fear reactions were examined in 15 highly tunnel-fearful and 15 matched control participants in 3 virtual driving scenarios: an open environment, a partially open tunnel (gallery), and a closed tunnel. Highly tunnel-fearful participants were characterized by elevated fear responses specifically during tunnel drives as reflected in verbal fear ratings, heart rate reactions, and startle responses. Heart rate and fear ratings differentiated highly tunnel-fearful from control participants with an accuracy of 88% and 93%, respectively. Results indicate that virtual environments are valuable tools for the assessment of fear reactions and should be used in future experimental research.     

Imaginal correlates of self-reported fear and avoidance behavior

Two analogue studies explored the relationship between the content of subjects' imagery and both behavioral avoidance and self-reports of fear. In the first study, reports of aversive imagery in a fearful situation were much more frequent among high- as compared to low-avoidance subjects. Reports of aversive imagery were found significantly associated with both fear and avoidance behavior. In the second study, findings were extended, indicating that imagery content is associated with fear and avoidance when subjects imagine themselves in a fearful situation as well as when they are actually in one. This suggested some degree of functional equivalence between imagined and real situations. However, no relationship was found between image clarity and either fear or avoidance. Since imagery appears to play an important role in mediating fearful behavior, manipulation of imagery might serve as an effective treatment strategy.     

Interrelationships between spider fear associations,attentional disengagement and self-reported fear: A preliminary test of a dual-systems model

Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.     

Decoupling between physiological,self-reported,and expressed emotional responses in alexithymia

Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying, describing, and expressing emotions and is associated with mental health problems involving emotion dysregulation. To understand the relationship between alexithymia and health, researchers have predominately examined group differences in physiological arousal and self-reported experience. The present study extends this research by examining differences in physiological arousal, self-reported experience, and observed expression. In addition to this between-subjects approach the present study examined within-person difference scores to better understand individual differences in decoupling between all three emotional response domains. Participants (N = 106; M = 18.00 years), classified as alexithymic (males = 17, females = 34) or non-alexithymic (males = 23, females = 32), gave an impromptu 3-min speech while measures of heart rate and galvanic skin response were continuously recorded. Participants completed self-report measures of self-conscious affect and their behavior was later coded for self-conscious affect. Alexithymic participants: (1) had significantly higher heart rate during baseline however physiological responses were indistinguishable during arousal and recovery, (2) experienced greater self-consciousness collapsing across the tasks, and (3) expressed more self-consciousness as a result of the speech. In addition, findings support the decoupling hypothesis. Alexithymic males experienced and expressed greater self-consciousness compared to their physiological arousal. Results are discussed in terms of the underlying mechanisms of alexithymia.     

The effect of cue Relevance,Ambiguity, and self-reported hostility on tat responses

The interaction of cue relevance and ambiguity was studied. Ss high or low in self-reported hostility were administered 8 T A T cards, half of which were high in hostility cue relevance, half low. Half of each subset, in turn, was high in ambiguity, half low. Highly relevant cards tended to elicit more aggressive content than low relevant cards, and stories to ambiguous cards tended to contain more aggressive themes than unambiguous ones, independent of hostility relevance. Hostile Ss tended to be best discriminated from non-hostile Ss on highly relevant cards, where they responded with more aggressive themes. Results were contrasted with previous findings and it was concluded that consistent with findings where hostility is defined by observation or arousal, highly relevant cues are most sensitive to hostility level. While greater expression of negative content, increments in ambiguity did not add to the sensitivity of the stimuli.     

Emotion regulation,disgust sensitivity,and psychophysiological responses to a disgust-inducing film

Abstract

Using a disgust-inducing film, Gross (1998) showed that the instruction to suppress mimic expression (suppression) triggered physiological arousal, while the instruction to think about the film in order to adopt a detached and unemotional attitude (reappraisal) reduced affective strain compared to a condition instructing subjects simply to watch the film (watch). The present paper investigates, if disgust sensitivity has a moderating role in this context. Physiological, subjective, and behavior responses were recorded in 120 males divided according to high/low disgust sensitivity who were exposed to the disgust-inducing film used by Gross. The instruction effects reported by Gross could not be replicated. However, high disgust-sensitive subjects were more physiologically and emotionally aroused than low disgust-sensitive subjects. Interactions between disgust sensitivity and the three film instructions can possibly be traced back to a repressive coping style of subjects with low disgust sensitivity.     

Fear of criticism in washers,checkers and phobics

Fear of criticism in patients who manifested specific phobias, washing rituals and checking rituals was investigated. Six items from the Fear Survey Schedule measuring degree of anxiety to criticism were selected for this purpose. Results indicated that both washers and checkers showed more sensitivity to criticism than did phobics, while washers and checkers did not differ significantly. The implications of these findings for treatment are discussed.     

Aging, selective attention, and inhibitory processes: a psychophysiological approach.

The present study investigated the efficiency with which younger and older adults allocate attention to relevant and irrelevant stimuli. The model of attention guiding this research links the orienting response with the allocation of attention and habituation with the inhibition of the allocation of attention. We adapted a paradigm developed by Iacono and Lykken (1983) in which subjects are instructed unambiguously either to attend to or to ignore a series of innocuous tones, and the skin conductance orienting response elicited by each tone is measured. Results revealed that young subjects instructed to ignore the tones habituated more quickly than did those instructed to attend to the tones. However, older adults exhibited nondifferential orienting across the 2 instruction conditions. These results suggest an age-related deficit in the ability to inhibit attention to irrelevant stimuli.     

Stroop interference, self-focus and perfectionism in social phobics

Stroop interference was studied in a group of social phobics under two conditions: presence or absence of a mirror. The mirror was used with the purpose of inducing a higher level of self-focus during testing; this was expected to activate dysfunctional self structures that would increase Stroop interference on socially threatening words. The social phobics showed a Stroop interference effect on socially threatening words, but not on physically threatening words or colour words, relative to the control group. The hypothesis that the presence of the mirror would increase the Stroop interference on socially threatening words, however, was not supported by the data. On the other hand, the social phobics scored significantly higher than the controls on trait measures of self-consciousness and perfectionism. There was a correlation between perfectionism (concern over mistakes) and Stroop interference on socially threatening words. Self-consciousness also correlated with Stroop interference, but this effect was unexpectedly seen most clearly on physically threatening words.     

Effects of fear of success, fear of failure, type of opponent, and feedback on female achievement performance

Female undergraduates (N = 240) assessed for fear of success (FS) and fear of failure (FF) competed against a male, female, or no opponent (norms) on an alpha-numeric substitution task. After completing one set of trials, subjects arbitrarily received success or failure feedback, then performed again. While there were no significant effects when subject's FS classification was based on total scores from the entire set of four cues used, performance effects were found for Horner's original cue: FS-absent females performed better against a male than a female opponent, whereas the reverse was true for the FS-present subjects. Two of the other FS cues interacted with FF: at low levels of FF, FS-absent subjects performed better than FS-present subjects; for high levels of FF, there were no differences between FS groups. A number of postperformance affect ratings were consistent with theoretical expectations that FS-present females would experience more negative effect over success in achievement contexts than would FS-absent females.