Changes in caffeine states enhance return of fear in spider phobia.

Treatment of phobias is sometimes followed by a return of fear. Animal and human research has shown that changes in external and internal contexts between the time of treatment and follow-up tests often enhance return of fear. The present study examined whether shifts in caffeine (C) state would enhance return of fear. Participants who were highly afraid of spiders (n=43) were treated in 1-session exposure-based therapy and tested for follow-up 1 week later. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups and received either placebo (P) or C at treatment and follow-up sessions: CC, PP, CP, and PC. Results demonstrated state-dependent learning. Participants experiencing incongruent drug states during treatment and follow-up (CP and PC) exhibited greater return of fear than those experiencing congruent drug states (CC and PP). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inhibition of return to social signals of fear.

The present study examined whether inhibition of return (IOR) is modulated by the fear relevance of the cue. Experiment 1 found similar magnitude of IOR was produced by neutral and fear faces and luminance matched cues. To allow a more sensitive measure of endogenously directed attention, Experiment 2 removed a central reorienting cue and more precisely measured the time course of IOR. At stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 500, 1,000 and 1,500 ms, fear face and luminance matched cues resulted in similar IOR. These findings suggest that IOR is triggered by event onsets and disregards event value. Views of IOR as an adaptive "foraging facilitator," whereby attention is guided to promote optimal sampling of important environmental events, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of fear and anger on selective attention.

This experiment examined the effects of two discrete negative emotions, fear and anger, on selective attention. A within-subjects design was used, and all participants (N = 98) experienced the control, anger, and fear conditions. During each condition, participants viewed a film clip eliciting the target emotion and subsequently completed a flanker task and emotion report. Selective attention costs were assessed by comparing reaction times (RTs) on congruent (baseline) trials with RTs on incongruent trials. There was a significant interaction between emotion condition (control, anger, fear) and flanker type (congruent, incongruent). Contrasts further revealed a significant interaction between emotion and flanker type when comparing RTs in the control and fear conditions, and a marginally significant interaction when comparing RTs in the control and anger conditions. This indicates that selective attention costs were significantly lower in the fear compared to the control condition and were marginally lower in the anger compared with the control condition. Further analysis of participants reporting heightened anger in the anger condition revealed significantly lower selective attention costs during anger compared to a control state. These findings support the general prediction that high arousal negative emotional states inhibit processing of nontarget information and enhance selective attention. This study is the first to show an enhancing effect of anger on selective attention. It also offers convergent evidence to studies that have previously shown an influence of fear on attentional focus using the global-local paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of fear arousal and suppression of fear upon social perception.

A research was designed to study the effects of fear arousal and suppression of fear upon social perception. "It was hypothesized that individuals subjected to a fear-producing situation would tend to project their feelings upon some social objects, and further, instructions to inhibit emotional reactions would increase the amount of projection." Sixty male volunteers from introductory psychology classes were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Control, Fear-Expression and Fear-Suppression. "The data indicate that the arousal of fear results in a tendency to project fear onto a stimulus object in the environment. The results are also consistent with the hypothesis that suppression facilitates the tendency to project although, in this latter instance, one is less confident in rejecting the null hypothesis. Several alternative explanations of the effects of the suppression variable were considered and the role of cognitive variables in the projection process were discussed." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The causal effects of emotion on couples' cognition and behavior.

The authors conducted 2 translational studies that assessed the causal effects of emotion on maladaptive cognitions and behaviors in couples. Specifically, the authors examined whether negative emotions increased and positive emotions decreased partner attributions and demand-withdraw behaviors. Study 1 (N=164) used video clips to assess the effects of emotion on individuals' attributions. Study 2 (N=47 couples) was a therapy analogue study intended to assess whether emotion generated from couples' conversations would influence subsequent attributions and behaviors. Results indicate that participants in the negative emotion conditions tended to attribute more blame to their partners and were more likely to engage in demand-withdraw patterns and other negative behaviors than were those in the positive emotion conditions. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disentangling the Effects of Safety-Behavior Utilization and Safety-Behavior Availability During Exposure-Based Treatment: A Placebo-Controlled Trial.

The primary aim of the current study was to further investigate the deleterious effects of safety-seeking behaviors on fear reduction by disentangling the effects of perceived availability of threat-relevant safety behaviors during treatment versus their actual use. Participants (N=72) displaying marked claustrophobic fear were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 conditions: (a) exposure only (EO), (b) exposure with phobic safety-behavior availability (SBA), (c) exposure with safety-behavior utilization (SBU), (d) credible placebo treatment (PL), or (e) wait list (WL). High end-state functioning rates at posttreatment were as follows: EO=94%, SBA=45%, SBU=44%, PL=25%, and WL=0%. Findings suggest that it is the perception of the availability of safety aids as opposed to their actual use that exerts a disruptive effect on fear reduction. Clinical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Borderline personality features moderate the effect of a fear induction on impulsivity.

This study examined the effects of laboratory-induced fear on impulsivity among participants who were high (n = 28) or low (n = 44) in borderline personality (BP) features. Participants were randomly assigned to complete a laboratory measure of impulsivity (passive avoidance learning task) following either a neutral mood induction or a fear induction. BP features moderated the association of the emotion condition (fear vs. neutral) with impulsivity: High-BP participants, but not low-BP participants, committed a greater number of impulsive responses in the fear condition compared with the neutral condition. Findings indicated that impulsivity among persons with BP features may not be a trait-like deficit, but rather, depends on emotional context. These findings suggest that future research should examine impulsivity under differing emotional conditions, and that clinical interventions to reduce impulsivity among persons with BP features should focus on responses to emotional contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of yohimbine on the extinction of conditioned fear: A role for context.

Six experiments with rat subjects examined the effect of yohimbine, an alpha-2 adrenergic autoreceptor antagonist, on the extinction of conditioned fear to a tone. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that systemic administration of yohimbine (1.0 mg/kg) facilitated a long-term decrease in freezing after extinction, and this depended on pairing drug administration with extinction training. However, Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that yohimbine did not eradicate the original fear learning: Freezing was renewed when the tone was tested outside of the extinction context. Experiments 5 and 6 found that the contextually specific attenuation of fear produced by yohimbine transferred to another extinguished conditional stimulus (CS) and not to a nonextinguished CS. The results suggest that yohimbine, when administered in the presence of a neutral context, creates a form of inhibition in that context that allows that specific context to reduce fear of an extinguished CS. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional momentum does not underlie the inhibition of return effect.

J. Pratt, T. M. Spalek, and F. Bradshaw (1999) recently proposed that attentional momentum is the mechanism underlying the inhibition of return (IOR) effect. They suggested that momentum associated with an attentional movement away from a peripherally cued location and toward an uncued opposite location is essential and fundamental to the finding of an IOR effect. Although it is clear from the present study and from a reanalysis of data from Pratt et al. that response time can be facilitated at an uncued opposite location, this putative effect of attentional momentum is neither robust nor reliable. First, it occurs for only a minority of participants. Second, it occurs in only a subset of the cued display positions. And finally, it is uncorrelated with the occurrence of IOR. Together the data indicate that the attentional momentum hypothesis is an overgeneralization and that it does not underlie the robust and reliable IOR effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interest value and relevance of fear arousing communications.

"The two experiments reported here were designed to show that a strong fear appeal could be more convincing than a weak one when (a) the communication is low in interest value and the dramatic nature of the 'strong' communication makes it considerably more interesting than the 'weak' communication, and (b) the communication is of low relevance to the actions of the audience… . There was little opinion change with the relatively uninteresting minimal fear lecture, while the degree of opinion change produced by the more interesting strong fear lecture was inversely related to the relevance of the material to the Ss." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The manipulation of dominance in monkeys with conditioned fear.

"2 group dominance tests were conducted on 10 rhesus monkeys. On the basis of these tests 5 pairs of animals adjacent, or nearly adjacent, in the hierarchy were given an additional 5 dominance determinations. The animal in each pair which received the greater number of raisins in each of the 7 tests between the 2 animals was designated as dominant. This animal in each pair was subjected to avoidance conditioning with this submissive partner as the conditioned stimulus… . The dominance status was found to be significantly reversed following the completion of conditioning. It was suggested that this observation provides behavioral evidence for the presence of fear in avoidance conditioning which is independent of the conditioning situation." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Twelve-month follow-up of virtual reality and standard exposure therapies for the fear of flying.

This study reports the 12-mo follow-up from patients with the fear of flying who were treated in a controlled study and randomly assigned (n=49) to virtual reality exposure (VRE) therapy, standard exposure (SE) therapy, or to a wait-list control (WL). VRE and SE were equally superior to WL. At 12 mo posttreatment, data were gathered on 24 of the 30 (80%) patients who were assigned to VRE or SE. Patients maintained their treatment gains, and 92% of VRE participants and 91% of SE participants had flown on a real airplane since the graduation flight. This is the 1st year-long follow-up of patients having been treated with VRE and indicates that short-term treatment can have lasting effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The roles of altitude and fear in the perception of height.

Previous research on perceiving spatial layout has found that people often exhibit normative biases in their perception of the environment. For instance, slant is typically overestimated and distance is usually underestimated. Surprisingly, however, the perception of height has rarely been studied. The present experiments examined the perception of height when viewed from the top (e.g., looking down) or from the bottom (e.g., looking up). Multiple measures were adapted from previous studies of horizontal extents to assess the perception of height. Across all of the measures, a large, consistent bias was found: Vertical distances were greatly overestimated, especially from the top. Secondary findings suggest that the overestimation of distance and size that occurs when looking down from a high place correlates with reports of trait- and state-level fear of heights, suggesting that height overestimation may be due, in part, to fear. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of changing contexts on return of fear following exposure therapy for spider fear.

Treatment of specific fears and phobias is sometimes followed by a return of fear. Work with rats has provided evidence that a greater return of fear occurs when a conditioned stimulus extinguished in 1 context is later presented in a different context than if presented in the same context in which it was originally extinguished. In the present study. 36 human participants who were highly afraid of spiders received 1 session of exposure therapy (with participant modeling) and were then tested for return of fear 1 week later in either the same or a different context. It was hypothesized that there would be a greater return of fear in those participants treated and followed up in different contexts than in those treated and followed up in the same context. Participants tested in a novel context at follow-up showed a greater return of fear than participants tested in the same context. Limitations and areas for future study are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of FG7142 on overexpectation of Pavlovian fear conditioning.

Six experiments studied the role of GABAA receptor activation in expression of overexpectation of Pavlovian fear conditioning. After separate pairings of CSA and CSB with shock in Stage I, rats received pairings of the compound AB with shock in Stage II, producing overexpectation of fear. The expression of overexpectation was attenuated, in a dose-dependent manner, by the benzodiazepine partial inverse agonist FG7142. FG7142 had no effect on responding to a CS paired with a low magnitude US or a CS subjected to associative blocking. These results suggest that the negative prediction error generated during overexpectation training may impose a mask on fear rather than erasing the original fear learning. They support claims that overexpectation shares features with extinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of match importance and gender on the team-serving attributional bias among interdependent sports team players.

This study examined the team-serving attributional bias (TSAB), and moderators of this bias, in sports team players. The authors predicted that, in line with a motivational explanation for TSABs, members of successful teams would make more internal, stable, and controllable attributions than would members of unsuccessful teams, but only after an important match. The authors also examined the impact of gender. After a competitive match, 528 athletes completed a Causal Dimension Scale for Teams and measures of perceived success and match importance. A series of hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that perceptions of success were positively associated with stable, internal, and externally controllable attributions. The authors also found that stability attributions were moderated by gender and match importance, with perceptions of success being positively associated with stable attributions for males regardless of match importance but positively associated with stable attributions only for those females who perceived the match to be important. The results, therefore, provide support for the use of TSABs within sports teams but also indicate that their use may be moderated by gender and match importance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strain difference in the effect of infralimbic cortex lesions on fear extinction in rats.

The infralimbic division of the medial prefrontal cortex (IL) has been implicated in the consolidation and retention of extinction memories. However, the effects of IL lesions on the retention of extinction memory are inconsistent. In the present experiments, we examined whether rat strain influences the effects of IL lesions on extinction. In Experiment 1, Sprague-Dawley (SD) or Long-Evans (LE) rats received a standard auditory fear conditioning procedure, which was followed by an extinction session; freezing served as the index of conditional fear. Our results reveal that focal IL lesions impair the retention of extinction in SD, but not LE rats. In addition to the strain difference in sensitivity to IL lesions, LE rats exhibited significantly higher levels of contextual fear before the outset of extinction training than SD rats. In a second experiment we thus examined whether contextual fear influenced the sensitivity of extinction to IL lesions in LE rats. LE rats received the same conditioning as in Experiment 1, and then were either merely exposed to a novel context or administered unsignaled shocks in that context, followed by extinction and test sessions. Our results reveal that LE rats with IL lesions showed normal extinction regardless of the levels of contextual fear manifest before extinction. Thus, we conclude that rat strain is an important variable that influences the role of infralimbic cortex in fear extinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of meprobamate on fear and palmar sweating.

With a ride on a ferris wheel as an anxiety-provoking situation, Ss were given meprobamate (1600 mg.) and placebo in an a-b, b-a administration. Measures of anxiety were obtained, viz., a direct measure of automatic activity (palmar sweat), an indirect measure of autonomic N.S. activity (reports re: upset stomach, increased heart rate, nervousness, hand tremulation, dizziness, cold sweat), and reports of degree of fear experienced. Meprobamate apparently did not lead to a significant reduction in the symptoms of anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpreting the effects of exercise on fear conditioning: The influence of time of day.

Previous studies indicate that physical exercise improves contextual fear memory, as evidenced by increased freezing behavior when rats are returned to a training environment that was initially paired with footshock. However, freezing behavior could also be affected by fatigue, especially because rats were tested shortly after the end of the dark cycle, which is when most wheel running was likely to occur. In addition, exercise has been shown to have anxiolytic effects, further confounding interpretation of the effects of exercise on cognition when using aversive conditioning tasks. These factors were examined in the present study by comparing freezing behavior in exercising and nonexercising rats that were tested at different times in the light cycle. In addition, all rats were tested on an elevated plus maze to assess anxiety-like behavior and in an open-field apparatus to measure locomotor activity in order to directly examine interactions between freezing, anxiety-like behavior, and locomotion. Consistent with prior studies, exercising rats exhibited more context freezing than did sedentary rats when tested early in the light cycle. However, the opposite pattern of results was obtained when testing occurred late in the light cycle, an effect driven by a difference in the amount of freezing exhibited by the sedentary control groups. Indeed, the levels of context freezing exhibited by exercising rats were comparable regardless of when the rats were tested during the light cycle. These data have implications for interpreting the effects of exercise on aversive conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)