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.     

Law enforcement preferences for PTSD treatment and crisis management alternatives

Evidence-based treatments (EBT) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remain underutilized. Analog research, however, indicates that patients may be more amenable to receiving EBT for PTSD than utilization rates suggest. This study sought to extend previous studies by investigating PTSD treatment preferences among law enforcement individuals (i.e., active duty officers, cadets, criminal justice students). We asked 379 participants, with varying trauma histories, to read a police traumatic event and imagine they had developed PTSD. Participants rated the credibility of six treatment options which they might encounter in a treatment setting, and chose their most and least preferred treatments. Next, they evaluated a widely used debriefing intervention aimed at preventing PTSD. Almost 90% of participants chose exposure or Cognitive Processing Therapy as their first or second most preferred treatment, and they rated these interventions as significantly more credible than the other four treatment options. The sample showed ambivalence regarding the perceived efficacy of debriefing but found the rationale credible. This study supports previous analog research indicating that patients may be more interested in EBT than indicated by utilization rates, and suggests that law enforcement departments should consider offering EBT to officers who develop PTSD.     

Disgust Sensitivity and Psychopathological Symptoms: Distinctions from Harm Avoidance

The present study examined the relationship between disgust sensitivity and symptoms of somatization, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, anger/hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism in a community sample. Participants (n = 121) completed the Disgust Scale-2, the Symptom Checklist-90, and the harm avoidance subscale of the Temperament and Character Inventory. Disgust sensitivity was found to be correlated with a broad range of psychopathological symptoms. However, results also indicated that these correlations were partially mediated by harm avoidance. That is, when controlling for levels of harm avoidance, the association between disgust sensitivity and psychopathological symptoms was either substantially reduced or became nonsignificant. These findings suggest that the tendency towards behavioral inhibition to avoid punishment and non-reward may partially account for the association between disgust sensitivity and a broad range of psychopathological symptoms.

Attitudes of African Americans Toward Participation in Medical Research

The underrepresentation of African Americans in medical research is problematic for several reasons, including disparities in health outcomes, differences in metabolism of pharmacological agents, and accurate assessment of health needs and costs. This paper investigates factors contributing to African Americans' lower likelihood of consenting to participation in medical research. In Study 1, three focus groups were conducted to assess concerns about research participation and to generate further hypotheses for questionnaire development. Study 2 presented a hypothetical clinical trial and collected questionnaire data on attitudes about participation. Both studies revealed a greater likelihood to mistrust the medical establishment among African American students. However, suspicion did not contribute to a decreased likelihood of participation. Several recommendations are offered regarding the recruitment of African Americans in research.     

Behavioral assessment of impulsivity: a comparison of children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

We conducted a brief computer-based assessment involving choices of concurrently presented arithmetic problems associated with competing reinforcer dimensions to assess impulsivity (choices controlled primarily by reinforcer immediacy) as well as the relative influence of other dimensions (reinforcer rate, quality, and response effort), with 58 children. Results were compared for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who were and were not receiving medication, and with typically developing children without ADHD. Within-subject and between-groups analyses of the ordinal influence of each of the reinforcer dimensions were conducted using both time- and response-allocation measures. In general, the choices of children with ADHD were most influenced by reinforcer immediacy and quality and least by rate and effort, suggesting impulsivity. The choices of children in the non-ADHD group were most influenced by reinforcer quality, and the influence of immediacy relative to the other dimensions was not statistically significant. Results are discussed with respect to the implications for assessment and treatment of ADHD.     

Sources of Intertrial Proactive Interference in Rats’ Short-Term Memory in a Delayed Successive Matching-to-Sample Modality Discrimination

Rats were trained on a delayed successive matching-to-stimulus modality task consisting of onset of chamber lights or a tone for the sample stimulus, S1, and a comparison stimulus, S2. Lever pressing to S1 was reinforced as was lever pressing to its matching S2 (light–light or tone–tone pairs) but not to its mismatching S2 (light–tone, tone–light pairs). The interval between S1 and S2 within a trial, the retention interval (RI), was varied between 1 and 6 s within sessions while the interval between S2 and the next S1, the intertrial interval (ITI), was reduced from 24 to 12 s and finally to 6 s over blocks of sessions. In Experiment 1, where S1 was kept at 2 s and S2 at 10 s, rats’ matching accuracy declined over the longer RI, was slightly disrupted as ITIs were reduced to 6 s only over 1-s RIs, and was generally poorer to the tone than light S1. In Experiment 2, where both stimuli were 10 s increasing RIs caused steeper declines in matching accuracy to the tone S1 than light S1 and decreasing ITIs to 6 s disrupted rats performance over both RIs. Matching accuracy to the tone but not to the light S1 was also poorer when a preceding trial's S2 was a light S2 than when it was a tone S2 only during Experiment 2. Thisintertrial stimulus disagreementeffect was not influenced by ITI duration. These results suggest that intertrial proactive interference in delayed matching tasks consists of two separate and independent processes in rats similar to those found in pigeons (Edhouse & White, 1988).