Conditioning experiences and phobias

A retrospective study was conducted to examine the extent to which phobias are associated with a conditioning pathway to fear. The Phobic Origin Questionnaire (Öst and Hugdahl, Behav. Res. Ther. 19, 439–477, 1981) was administered to a sample of 91 phobic outpatients (patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia, social phobics, simple phobies). Results show clearly that conditioning experiences occur more frequently than either vicarious or informational, learning experiences, which confirms the findings previously reported by Rimm, Janda, Lancaster, Nahl and Dittmar (Behav. Res. Ther. 15, 231–238, 1977) and by Öst and Hugdahl (1981; Behav. Res. Ther. 21, 623–631, 1983). Yet, conditioning experiences consist mainly of panic attacks in confined environments. The findings also suggest that a considerable number of phobias are based on a combination of different pathways to fear.     

Electrodermal conditioning to stimuli of evolutionary significance: Failure to replicate the preparedness effect

In the present study, an attempt was made to replicate the preparedness effect reported by Öhman, Fredrickson, Hugdahl, & Rimmö (1976). Following Öhman et al. (1976) as closely as possible, a differential conditioning procedure was carried out in which subjects'skin conductance responses (SCRs) were conditioned either to stimuli of evolutionary significance (slides of snakes and spiders) or to evolutionally neutral stimuli (slides of mushrooms and flowers). The experiment consisted of 8 habituation, 12 acquisition, and 20 extinction trials. Electric shock served as an unconditioned stimulus during the acquisition phase. Although SCRs showed significant decreases during habituation and were significantly influenced by the conditioning procedure during acquisition, they were not found to extinguish significantly more slowly in the group that saw slides of snakes and spiders. This result contradicts the earlier results reported by Öman and colleagues. Possible explanations for this failure to replicate their results are discussed.     

Errors in Planning and Decision-making and the Nature of Human Information Processing

Cet article aborde la question de la régulation de l'action humaine dans le contrôle des systémes hautement complexes. La "régulation de l'action" recouvre l'intéraction de la fixation des objectifs, des activités de prévision, de l'élaboration des hypothèses, du planning, de la prise de décision et de la réflexion. Des erreurs et des fautes caractéristiques relevant du planning et de la prise de décision sont décrites et rapportées à divers aspects du système humain de traitement de l'information. Beaucoup de fautes et d'erreurs renvoient à un nombre restreint de caractéristiques de l'esprit humain. On montre en outre qu'il n'est en rien facile d'échapper à ces fautes puisque ces processus de traitement de l'information que détient l'esprit humain sont parfaitement fonctionnels dans d'autres contextes.
This article deals with human action regulation when controlling very complex systems. "Action regulation" means the interaction of goal elaboration, forecasting activities, hypothesis formation, planning, decision making, and self reflection. Typical errors and mistakes in human planning and decision making are reported and related to characteristics of the human information processing system. It is demonstrated that a lot of very different errors and mistakes are based on a few characteristies of the human mind. Additionally we demonstrate that it is in no way simple to avoid these mistakes, as these information processing characteristies of the human mind are otherwise quite functional in a number of contexts.     

Psychoneurocardiology: Psychosomatic and somatopsychic approaches to hypertension research

We introduce the field of psychoneurocardiology, and cite examples of research into psychosomatic and somatopsychic bases for hypertensive development. Beta-adrenergic hyperreactivity (a possible precursor of hypertension), as indexed by electrocardiographic T-wave amplitude suppression, was greater during active than passive coping tasks. The rise in tonic mean arterial blood pressure in normotensives over a 19-month period was a joint function of self-reported daily stress and baroreceptor-dependent pain dampening (as determined by the PRES method of noninvasive controlled carotid baroreceptor manipulation). The latter finding provides support for the learned model of hypertension. In this model, phasic blood pressure increases stimulate the baroreceptors, which in turn dampen pain and stress. The long-term effect of this relief is initially to increase the frequency of such phasic increases, and eventually to produce a tonic elevation in blood pressure.     

Simultaneous classical conditioning of two effector systems

The experiment reported here was an attempt to develop an experimental procedure for independent classical conditioning of two different response systems, the skin conductance response (SCR) and the eyelid response. In a differential conditioning design with human subjects (N=50) two different unconditioned stimuli were used, a white noise (US₁) and an airpuff (US₂). Two conditioned stimuli (CS₁₁ and CS₁₂) were paired with US₁, and two other CSs (CS₂₁ and CS₂₂) were paired with US₂. A special trial architecture was used to accomplish measurement of both anticipatory SCR and eyelid responses during each trial. Significant eyelid differentiation as well as significant SCR (especially second interval responses) differentiation developed.     

Eyeblink startle responses in spider phobies before and after treatment: A pilot study

Before and after treatment, acoustic probes eliciting eyeblink startles were presented to 41 female spider phobies during a behavioral approach test (BAT). During this test, subjects pulled a glass jar containing a live spider as nearby as they normally would tolerate. In order to obtain baseline startles, the subjects also carried out a BAT with a basket containing attractive food items. Startle responses were found to be relatively larger during the spider BAT than during the food BAT. This difference in relative magnitude decreased as a result of one-session treatment. The startle response appeared to be relatively independent of other outcome measures (i.e., Spider Questionnaire, BAT, and heart rate). Taken together, the results sustain findings previously reported by Lang and co-workers.     

Affixal homonymy triggers full-form storage, even with inflected words, even in a morphologically rich language

This paper investigates whether affixal homonymy, the phenomenon that one affix form serves two or more semantic/syntactic functions, affects lexical processing of inflected words in a similar way for a morphologically rich language such as Finnish as for morphologically restricted languages such as Dutch and English. For the latter two languages, there is evidence that affixal homonymy triggers full-form storage for inflected words (Bertram, R., Schreuder, R., and Baayen, R. H. (in press). The balance of storage and computation in morphological processing: the role of word formation type, affixal homonymy, and productivity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition; Sereno and Jongman (1997). Processing of English inflectional morphology. Memory and Cognition, 25, 425-437). Two visual lexical decision experiments show the same pattern for Finnish. Apparently, the substantially richer morphology in Finnish does not prevent full-form storage for inflected words when the affix is homonymic.     

Muster früher Traumatisierung und die Effekte stationärer Psychotherapie

Early traumatic experiences of neglect, physical and sexual abuse in adult patients undergoing inpatient psychotherapeutic treatment were retrospectively assessed. Associations between these three forms of trauma and with patient gender were analyzed. The effects of early traumatization in general, gender and patterns of specific experiences on the symptom level, level of everyday functioning and treatment outcome were also investigated. A total of 191 patients in a psychosomatic psychotherapy ward of a university hospital were assessed using standardized questionnaires on sociodemographic and clinical variables on admission and at discharge. The type and extent of early traumatization before the age of 18 years were estimated after the initial interview from standardized reports of the therapists. The results indicate that the probability of being exposed to one of the traumatic experiences under study are not independent of each other. Furthermore, female patients were victims of sexual abuse and neglect more often than males. Compared to non-traumatized patients, trauma victims exhibited more psychological symptoms in the symptom checklist 90 revised (SCL-90-R) and a lower level of functioning according to the global assessment of functioning (GAF) but achieved a comparable relative benefit from treatment. Sexual abuse (SCL-90-R and GAF) and neglect (SCL-90-R only) affected the levels of impairment on admission and at discharge in a similar way; however, only weak evidence for differential effects of trauma patterns on therapy outcomes was found. Methodological limitations of the present approach and implications for the design of inpatient psychotherapeutic interventions in adult patients with early traumatic experiences are discussed.