Conditioned eyelid responses in phobic patients

Eyelid conditioning was carried out in three groups of phobic patients: (i) animal phobies, (ii) agoraphobics, and (iii) social phobics. Several measures, including anxiety and improvement ratings, the Eysenck Personality Inventory, the Cornell Medical Index, and two other symptom check lists were administered. The groups were found to differ on a large number of variables, including conditioned response frequency during acquisition (P < 0.006) and extraversion. These variables were interdependent, and partialling out one on covariance analysis eliminated the significant difference of the other. Number of conditioned responses during extinction significantly differentiated the three groups when anxiety level was partialled out. These findings suggest that the failure to extinguish fears as well as their rapid acquisition may be relevant to the development of animal phobias.