Central and basolateral amygdala neurons crash the aversive conditioning party: Theoretical comment on Rorick-Kehn and Steinmetz (2005).

Rorick-Kehn and Steinmetz (2005) (see record 2005-13804-012) report that neurons in the central and basolateral nuclei of the amygdala exhibit learning-related spike firing to conditional stimuli associated with shock in 3 different aversive conditioning paradigms: eyeblink conditioning, fear conditioning, and signaled avoidance conditioning. Central nucleus neurons responded in all 3 tasks, whereas basolateral nucleus neurons were more activated by fear and avoidance conditioning. These results reveal that amygdala neurons are differentially engaged by aversive conditioning, but questions remain concerning the associative basis and functional role for these unit responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of response-produced and exteroceptive feedback in the attenuation of fear over the course of avoidance learning.

Possible mechanisms mediating fear attenuation over prolonged avoidance learning were examined. In Replication 1, two groups of rats (masters) received 50 or 200 trials of signaled avoidance training. Six groups were yoked to each master group: Three were strictly yoked, and three were yoked only for reinforced conditioned stimulus (CS) presentations (yoked fear conditioning). Of the six groups, two (one strictly yoked and one yoked fear conditioning) received exteroceptive feedback contingent upon the reponses of the masters, two received random/noncontingent feedback, and two received no feedback. Fear of the conditioned stimulus (CS), indexed by freezing during the CS, was lowest in the 200-trial masters and in the two 200-trial groups receiving contingent feedback. In Replication 2, which was procedurally identical to Replication 1 except that the master groups received contingent exteroceptive feedback, fear was lowest in the same three groups. These results support the conclusion that the response-produced feedback that an avoidance response provides is responsible for the fear attenuation seen in well-trained avoidance responders. Several hypotheses concerning the effects of feedback in mediating fear attenuation are examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategies within hypnosis for reducing phobic behavior.

Compared 3 methods for reducing fear of snakes using approach behavior and self-report anxiety measures of 36 adult female snake phobics. The methods, all involving hypnosis, were: (a) relaxation while recalling fearful snake-related events, (b) fear arousal during similar recall, and (c) posthypnotic suggestion about the disappearance of the snake phobia. All methods led to a significant decrease in fear as measured by overt behavior and self-report instruments, while notreatment controls showed little change. Because fear arousal within treatment had no advantage over methods, some doubt it cast on abreaction as essential to therapy of fears. Hypnotizability was positively related to degree of final approach behavior, and S's self-report of depth of hypnosis was positively related to degree of improvement. No S had ever experienced a harmful contact with snakes; the role of cognitive elaborations in the development of persistent fears is noted. (36 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Dental Subscale of the Children's Fear Survey Schedule: a factor analytic study in The Netherlands

The Dental Subscale of the Children's Fear Survey Schedule (CFSS-DS) is a well-known instrument for assessing dental fear in children. Previous studies have shown that the scale has acceptable reliability and validity. Factor analysis using scores of a group of Finnish schoolchildren resulted in three factors. No other data on the factor structure have been published. In order to report on the factor structure of the Dutch parental version of the CFSS-DS, the present study was undertaken. Factor analysis using scores from a group of Dutch children (n= 150) demonstrated a factor pattern fairly similar to the results found in the Finnish study. Three factors were found: 1) fear of highly invasive dental procedures, 2) fear of less invasive aspects of treatment and 3) fear of medical aspects. Considering that almost all items load substantially (> or =0.20) on more than one factor, it seems that one primary underlying dimension exists: fear of invasive treatment aspects. The CFSS-DS is proposed as a reliable, one-dimensional measure of dental fear.     

A functional MRI study of human amygdala responses to facial expressions of fear versus anger.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the human brain was used to compare changes in amygdala activity associated with viewing facial expressions of fear and anger. Pictures of human faces bearing expressions of fear or anger, as well as faces with neutral expressions, were presented to 8 healthy participants. The blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) fMRI signal within the dorsal amygdala was significantly greater to Fear versus Anger, in a direct contrast. Significant BOLD signal changes in the ventral amygdala were observed in contrasts of Fear versus Neutral expressions and, in a more spatially circumscribed region, to Anger versus Neutral expressions. Thus, activity in the amygdala is greater to fearful facial expressions when contrasted with either neutral or angry faces. Furthermore, directly contrasting fear with angry faces highlighted involvement of the dorsal amygdaloid region. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's reluctance to seek help with schoolwork.

Elementary-school children were asked why they do, or do not, ask for help from parents, teachers, and classmates when they have problems in math and reading. Responses were correlated with achievement scores. Findings indicate: (a) Classmates are seen as less helpful than adults in answering questions, (b) there is more concern about possible negative reactions (i.e., perceptions of being "dumb") from classmates than from adults, (c) children perceive a greater need for help in math than in reading, (d) girls are more concerned than boys about negative reactions to help-seeking in math, (e) the more children believe that asking questions is likely to help in learning, the more they like to ask questions, and (f) the lower the child's achievement, the greater their reluctance to ask questions. Discussion focuses on ways in which children's attitudes differ according to academic subject and identity of the helper. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using the bubble inclinometer to measure laryngeal tilt and predict difficulty of laryngoscopy

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a simple device, the bubble inclinometer, to measure degrees of laryngeal tilt (LT) for predicting difficulty of direct laryngoscopy using a Macintosh #3 laryngoscope. DESIGN: Randomized, double-blind study. SETTING: Inpatient surgery center at a university medical center. PATIENTS: 50 renal lithotripter patients. INTERVENTIONS: Patients were measured with the bubble inclinometer and the laryngeal indices caliper. A sleep dose of thiopental sodium (4 mg/kg) and a muscle-relaxing dose of succinylcholine (1 mg/kg) were then given to each patient. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: LT was measured by both methods (directly and indirectly). Difficulty of laryngoscopy was graded as follows: Grade 1 = all of vocal cords seen; Grade 2 = part of vocal cords seen; Grade 3 = no part of vocal cords seen. CONCLUSIONS: The bubble inclinometer accurately and reproducibly measures relative LT, and the anterior tilt of the larynx directly correlates with the ability to see the laryngeal opening during direct laryngoscopy with a Macintosh #3 laryngoscope.     

A comparison of study strategies for passages: Rereading, answering questions, and generating questions.

Students are often encouraged to generate and answer their own questions on to-be-remembered material, because this interactive process is thought to enhance memory. But does this strategy actually work? In three experiments, all participants read the same passage, answered questions, and took a test to get accustomed to the materials in a practice phase. They then read three passages and did one of three tasks on each passage: reread the passage, answered questions set by the experimenter, or generated and answered their own questions. Passages were 575-word (Experiments 1 and 2) or 350-word (Experiment 3) texts on topics such as Venice, the Taj Mahal, and the singer Cesaria Evora. After each task, participants predicted their performance on a later test, which followed the same format as the practice phase test (a short-answer test in Experiments 1 and 2, and a free recall test in Experiment 3). In all experiments, best performance was predicted after generating and answering questions. We show, however, that generating questions led to no improvement over answering comprehension questions, but that both of these tasks were more beneficial than rereading. This was the case on an immediate short-answer test (Experiment 1), a short-answer test taken 2 days after study (Experiment 2), and an immediate free recall test (Experiment 3). Generating questions took at least twice as long as answering questions in all three experiments, so although it is a viable alternative to answering questions in the absence of materials, it is less time-efficient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychotherapy by precedent: Unexamined legacies from pre-1920 psychoanalysis.

Asserts that many psychotherapists employ a therapeutic stance characterized by an underplayed receptive style, hesitancy to answer questions or to give advice, wariness about being manipulated by the client, and preoccupation with the framework of therapy (e.g., fees, vacations, canceled appointments). While such a stance was appropriate to pre-1920 psychoanalytic theory (in which frustrating the client's strivings for regressive gratification was thought to be a prerequisite for insight), it is inappropriate to post-1920 theory (in which relief from guilt, humiliation, and fear is thought to be a prerequisite). The therapist's restrained style, originally thought to be facilitative can now be seen as having the potentially detrimental effect of reinforcing the inhibition and self-doubt that lie at the heart of the client's problems. The more significant form of client acting-out is not, as had been believed, asking questions, but rather failing to ask questions, and in general, the client's hesitancy to question where therapy is going and to challenge what the therapist is saying and doing. Therapists who are no longer concerned that advice-giving would feed into clients' regressive fantasies and make clients dependent on them can then focus on the real reason for not giving advice (i.e., that therapists have no advice to give). (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Randomized response versus direct questioning: Two data-collection methods for sensitive information.

Two nonoverlapping random samples of 200 sorority women reported stigmatizing behaviors differentially, according to survey technique. The 2 survey methods were direct questioning and randomized response. The randomized response technique guaranteed privacy of confidential information via a randomizing device and hence reduced respondents' inclination to refuse to respond or to lie. Survey items varied in degrees of sensitivity. For each item, a t test compared proportions of respondents admitting to the stigmatizing characteristic when queried directly and when queried via a randomizing device. Less sensitive questions showed no difference between the 2 data-collection methods. More sensitive questions showed a greater proportion of Ss reporting stigmatizing behaviors when guaranteed privacy of information with the randomized response technique. This field test confirmed the utility of the randomized response technique as a versatile method of collecting more accurate confidential information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of two short-term desensitization methods in the treatment of test anxiety.

2 short-term desensitization methods, accelerated massed desensitization and anxiety management training, were compared with standard systematic desensitization in terms of reducing self-reported test anxiety in 44 high test-anxious undergraduates. Posttreatment scores on the Suinn Test Anxiety Behavior Scale indicate that all 3 treatment procedures significantly reduced test anxiety as compared with a waiting-list control group. However, self-reported anxiety following treatment for the anxiety management training group was higher than for the standard desensitization and accelerated massed desensitization groups, and the standard desensitization procedure was significantly more effective than anxiety management training. Anxiety management training, a general or nonspecific program for anxiety control, reduced test anxiety with just 1 hr of direct training in counteracting anxiety. It did not, however, reduce other salient fears as measured by scores on a fear survey schedule. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fears of death in suicidal and nonsuicidal adolescents.

Suicidal, psychiatric, and normal adolescent girls and boys, ages 15–17 yrs, participated in a study on five types of death fears. A mixed within-between multivariate analysis of variance (5 factors?×?3 groups) yielded significant interactive effects indicating that there were different profiles of fears among the three groups: Relative to the other groups, suicidal adolescents displayed little differentiation between facets of fear, with differences in the magnitude of fear limited to the intrapersonal facets. Correlates of fear varied between groups: Fear was positively correlated with suicidality in normal Ss, negatively correlated with suicidality among suicidal ones, and unrelated to suicidality in the psychiatric group. It is suggested that fear of death is processed and experienced differently by suicidal and nonsuicidal adolescents to serve as a facilitator or inhibitor of suicidal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Miller’s acquired drive study.

Comments on the article Studies of fear as an acquirable drive: I. Fear as motivation and fear-reduction as reinforcement in learning of new responses by N. E. Miller (1948). At a time when behavior theorists had become rather comfortable with unlearned, physiological, need-based "primary" drives, Miller's (1948) article pushed out the boundaries to include "acquired" drives, the much more controversial area of learned motivation, the mysterious but important area that includes our fears and desires. Miller (1948) developed an animal model suggesting that acquired drives follow the same paradigm that had been worked out for primary drives. Fear was a learned response. (In 1948 Miller cautiously avoided the delicate question of what the learning mechanism was.) This learned fear is a drive because it motivates several learned and unlearned responses. Any particular response that suddenly reduces this learned fear drive will be reinforced. Remember that at that time the drive reduction hypothesis had been clearly stated, but its efficacy and generality were not yet clear. Miller was seeking to greatly extend its generality. Miller's study, its design and execution, was simple and direct, and its message was, too. The white chamber comes to arouse fear, and getting from the white chamber to a black chamber reduces fear. Therefore any response that permits the rat to go from white to black, such as turning a little wheel, should be quickly learned. The demonstration of such learning made Miller's study a cornerstone of the stimulus-response (S-R) reinforcement position that was sweeping through behavior theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal order and the perceived mutability of events: Implications for blame assignment.

Hypothesized that later occurrences in a series of events tend to evoke counterfactual alternatives more strongly and, hence, tend to be blamed more for ensuing negative outcomes than do earlier occurrences. In Study 1, Ss played the role of students whose task it was to read an article and then to identify the questions they thought a teacher might include on a test of it. Consistent with the hypothesis, Ss were less critical of a teacher whose test questions did not match their own when the teacher generated his or her questions before they did than when he or she generated them after they did. In Study 2, Ss played the role of teachers whose task it was to select questions to be answered by a student. Presumably, because of a greater fear of being blamed, Ss selected easier questions when their selection of questions occurred after the student had finished studying than when it occurred before the student began studying. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fear conditioned with escapable and inescapable shock: Effects of a feedback stimulus.

Four experiments, with 140 male Fischer rats, compared the level of fear conditioned with escapable and inescapable shock. In Exps I and II, master Ss that had received 50 unsignaled escapable shocks were less afraid of the situation where the shock had occurred than were yoked Ss that had received inescapable shocks. Comparable results were found in Exps III and IV, which used freezing as an index of fear of a discrete CS that had been paired with shock. Control per se was not necessary to produce the low level of fear seen in the master Ss. Yoked groups receiving a feedback signal at the time the master made an escape response showed a low level of fear that was comparable to that of the masters and significantly less than that seen in the yoked Ss without feedback. In addition, there were strong suggestions that control and feedback exert their effects through the same or highly similar mechanisms. Possible explanations for how control and the exteroceptive feedback signal produce this effect are discussed. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Objective measurement of fear of success and fear of failure: A factor analytic approach.

Several objectively scored measures of fear of success and fear of failure have been designed in recent years, but there is little evidence that they measure 2 distinct, unidimensional constructs. The present study was undertaken primarily to determine if fear of success and fear of failure are operationally distinct and if all fear of success measures tap a single unidimensional construct. Eight Fear of Success and Fear of Failure scales (e.g., Sarason's Test Anxiety Scale and Alpert-Haber Achievement Anxiety Test) were administered to 415 male and female undergraduates, and the scores were intercorrelated. Results indicate that fear of success is not a unidimensional construct and that some of the measures of fear of success and fear of failure are highly related. Next, each scale was factor analyzed, and 37 new variables were created. These were in turn factor analyzed, and 5 highly stable orthogonal factors were obtained. One of these factors appears to be fear of success; another is clearly test anxiety (called fear of failure in the literature on achievement motivation). A 3rd factor is concerned with sex-role-related attitudes toward success in medical school. A 4th seems to reflect neurotic insecurity, and the 5th has to do with the value of success. Indices of psychological well-being and psychosomatic illness related differently to each of the 5 factors. Implications and further questions are discussed briefly. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do parents reinforce somatic complaints in their children?

Objective: To examine the influence of parental solicitousness on self-reported somatic complaints in school-age children. Design and Main Outcome Measures: Participants were 564 children (mean age 10 years) and their parents. Children completed self-report measures of somatic complaints, parental solicitousness, depressiveness, fear, and sense of coherence. Somatic complaints were assessed again 6 months later. Parents also completed a questionnaire about solicitousness. Results: Parental solicitousness as reported by children or parents was unrelated to the frequency of self-reported somatic complaints. Symptoms of depression, fear, and lower sense of coherence were associated with more somatic complaints, but did not interact with parental solicitousness. Conclusion: Parental solicitousness seems unrelated to more frequent somatic complaints in schoolchildren. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does mentioning “some people” and “other people” in a survey question increase the accuracy of adolescents' self-reports?

A great deal of developmental research has relied on self-reports solicited using the “some/other” question format (“Some students think that… but other students think that…”). This article reports tests of the assumptions underlying its use: that it conveys to adolescents that socially undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors are not uncommon and legitimizes reporting them, yielding more valid self-reports than would be obtained by “direct” questions, which do not mention what other people think or do. A meta-analysis of 11 experiments embedded in four surveys of diverse samples of adolescents did not support the assumption that the some/other form increases validity. Although the some/other form led adolescents to think that undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were more common and resulted in more reports of those attitudes and behaviors, answers to some/other questions were lower in criterion validity than were answers to direct questions. Because some/other questions take longer to ask and answer and require greater cognitive effort from participants (because they involve more words), and because they decrease measurement accuracy, the some/other question format seems best avoided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A dental fears typology of oral surgery patients: Matching patients to anxiety interventions.

Two studies are described in which dental patients were administered the Dental Fear Survey (DFS) and then received 1 of 5 anxiety reduction interventions to prepare them for extraction of 3rd-molar teeth. Interventions included standard clinic treatment, oral premedications, and several relaxation-based procedures. Dependent variables were self-reported and observer-rated distress. In the 1st study (N?=?231), cluster analyses of the DFS subscales revealed that patients could be subtyped as low-fear, high-fear, or cue-anxious patients who admitted fear only in response to specific stimuli. Dental fear subtypes were distinguishable by situational cognitions reported, and fear subtype interacted with anxiety intervention to predict distress. These results were replicated in the 2nd study (N?=?150). The results are seen as supportive of a multidimensional view of dental anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mechanisms involved in the observational conditioning of fear.

Three experiments support the hypothesis that mechanisms involved in observational conditioning (OC) of fear are similar to those of direct classical conditioning and involve the organism attempting to detect the causal structure of its environment. Exp 1, a correlational analysis, shows that model monkeys' fear behaviors on snake trials (unconditioned stimulus [UCS]) were highly correlated with observer monkeys' fear (unconditioned response [UCR]) while watching the models' fear. In Exp 2, all observers showed distress while watching the model's fear during Session 1 of OC, but only observers who could see the snake to which the model was reacting continued to show fear during subsequent OC sessions, suggesting that the model's fear is an easily habituable UCS. In Exp 3, observers acquired significant fear of snakes after 1 OC session, indicating that the continued fear of those Exp 2 observers that could see the snake may reflect their own acquired fear of snakes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)