To look or not to look at threat?

Pflugshaupt, Tobias; Mosimann, Urs Peter; Schmitt, W; Wartburg, Roman von; Wurtz, Pascal; Lüthi, Mathias; Nyffeler, Thomas; Heß, Christian; Müri, René M.

doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.05.005

Cited by 28 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The absence of a clear clinical diagnosis for SP by means of a clinical interview in our sample of spider-fearful individuals might limit the validity of our findings. However, mean SPQ and FSQ scores in spider-fearful individuals were very high and correspond to clinical sample means (Pflugshaupt et al, 2007 ; Müller et al, 2011 ; Fisler et al, 2013 ; Gerdes and Alpers, 2014 ; Peperkorn et al, 2014 ; Soravia et al, 2014 ), suggesting that our results can be generalized to clinically significant spider phobia. Furthermore, a closer inspection of demographic data revealed that most of the spider-fearful participants indicated at least a moderate spider fear that was perceived as disturbing and accompanied by clear avoidance behavior in real life environment.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Enhanced Discriminative Fear Learning of Phobia-Irrelevant Stimuli in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Mosig

Merz

Mohr

et al. 2014

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Avoidance is considered as a central hallmark of all anxiety disorders. The acquisition and expression of avoidance, which leads to the maintenance and exacerbation of pathological fear is closely linked to Pavlovian and operant conditioning processes. Changes in conditionability might represent a key feature of all anxiety disorders but the exact nature of these alterations might vary across different disorders. To date, no information is available on specific changes in conditionability for disorder-irrelevant stimuli in specific phobia (SP). The first aim of this study was to investigate changes in fear acquisition and extinction in spider-fearful individuals as compared to non-fearful participants by using the de novo fear conditioning paradigm. Secondly, we aimed to determine whether differences in the magnitude of context-dependent fear retrieval exist between spider-fearful and non-fearful individuals. Our findings point to an enhanced fear discrimination in spider-fearful individuals as compared to non-fearful individuals at both the physiological and subjective level. The enhanced fear discrimination in spider-fearful individuals was neither mediated by increased state anxiety, depression, nor stress tension. Spider-fearful individuals displayed no changes in extinction learning and/or fear retrieval. Surprisingly, we found no evidence for context-dependent modulation of fear retrieval in either group. Here, we provide first evidence that spider-fearful individuals show an enhanced discriminative fear learning of phobia-irrelevant (de novo) stimuli. Our findings provide novel insights into the role of fear acquisition and expression for the development and maintenance of maladaptive responses in the course of SP.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Enhanced Discriminative Fear Learning of Phobia-Irrelevant Stimuli in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Mosig

Merz

Mohr

et al. 2014

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…However, from the few studies that did employ longer trials, it appears that trends present in the initial maintenance of attention continue over a larger time scale. For example, the present finding of decreased maintenance of gaze on threat in spider phobia was found to hold throughout the course of longer trials (9 s: Pflugshaupte et al, 2007; 60 s: Rinck & Becker, 2006). Also, the present finding of increased initial maintenance of gaze on threat in PTSD was found to continue over 10 s trials (Kimble et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 53%

“…Trials lasted 3 minutes, and increased maintenance of gaze on the spider, as well as the room’s exit, was found in high versus low spider fearful individuals. The sustained maintenance of gaze on real spiders found byLange et al (2004) contrasts with the sustained avoidance of gaze on mere images of spiders found over 3 s (Hermans et al, 1999; Rinck & Becker, 2006), 9 s (Pflugshaupt et al, 2007) and 60 s (Rinck & Becker, 2006) trials. One might conclude that Lange et al’s findings cast doubt on the clinical significance of attentional avoidance of threatening images, because the phenomenon may be limited to encounters with mere representations of threat.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Eye tracking of attention in the affective disorders: A meta-analytic review and synthesis

Armstrong

Olatunji

2012

Clinical Psychology Review

841

716

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A large body of research has demonstrated that affective disorders are characterized by attentional biases for emotional stimuli. However, this research relies heavily on manual reaction time (RT) measures that cannot fully delineate the time course and components of attentional bias. Eye tracking technology, which allows relatively direct and continuous measurement of overt visual attention, may provide an important supplement to RT measures. This article reviews eye tracking research on anxiety and depression, evaluating the experimental paradigms and eye movement indicators used to study attentional biases. Also included is a meta-analysis of extant eye tracking research (33 experiments; N = 1579) on both anxiety and depression. Relative to controls, anxious individuals showed increased vigilance for threat during free viewing and visual search, and showed difficulty disengaging from threat in visual search tasks, but not during free viewing. In contrast, depressed individuals were not characterized by vigilance for threat during free viewing, but were characterized by reduced orienting to positive stimuli, as well as reduced maintenance of gaze on positive stimuli and increased maintenance of gaze on dysphoric stimuli. Implications of these findings for theoretical accounts of attentional bias in anxiety and depression are discussed, and avenues for future research using eye-tracking technology are outlined.

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“…Several methodological issues might have contributed to these inconsistent findings: First, phobic stimulation might engage an avoidance tendency, as postulated in the attention-avoidance hypothesis [16] , and/or overload the encoding capacities interfering with subsequent detailed processing of phobia-relevant information. In fact, previous eye movement data showed that individuals with specific phobia tend to avoid a detailed perceptual analysis of their feared objects after an increased initial orienting [17] – [18] . Second, the poorer quality of cognitive representations and reduced memory performance for phobic stimuli might result from short intervals between initial stimulus presentation and the memory test.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Remembering the Object You Fear: Brain Potentials during Recognition of Spiders in Spider-Fearful Individuals

2014

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In the present study we investigated long-term memory for unpleasant, neutral and spider pictures in 15 spider-fearful and 15 non-fearful control individuals using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. During the initial (incidental) encoding, pictures were passively viewed in three separate blocks and were subsequently rated for valence and arousal. A recognition memory task was performed one week later in which old and new unpleasant, neutral and spider pictures were presented. Replicating previous results, we found enhanced memory performance and higher confidence ratings for unpleasant when compared to neutral materials in both animal fearful individuals and controls. When compared to controls high animal fearful individuals also showed a tendency towards better memory accuracy and significantly higher confidence during recognition of spider pictures, suggesting that memory of objects prompting specific fear is also facilitated in fearful individuals. In line, spider-fearful but not control participants responded with larger ERP positivity for correctly recognized old when compared to correctly rejected new spider pictures, thus showing the same effects in the neural signature of emotional memory for feared objects that were already discovered for other emotional materials. The increased fear memory for phobic materials observed in the present study in spider-fearful individuals might result in an enhanced fear response and reinforce negative beliefs aggravating anxiety symptomatology and hindering recovery.

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To look or not to look at threat?

Cited by 28 publications

References 37 publications

Enhanced Discriminative Fear Learning of Phobia-Irrelevant Stimuli in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Enhanced Discriminative Fear Learning of Phobia-Irrelevant Stimuli in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Eye tracking of attention in the affective disorders: A meta-analytic review and synthesis

Remembering the Object You Fear: Brain Potentials during Recognition of Spiders in Spider-Fearful Individuals

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