Bio-informational processing in agoraphobia

Abstract

McNeil et al. (1984) found that agoraphobics, unlike simple phobics, fail to respond physiologically to personally-relevant fear scripts in Lang's bio-informational imagery paradigm. Prompted by these findings, we conducted an experiment to investigate self-report and physiological (SCR and HR) responses to imagery scripts in 24 agoraphobics. Twelve subjects received stimulus training and 12 received response training. Subjects were then exposed to imagery scripts describing a neutral scene, an action scene, and three agoraphobia scenes that varied in propositional content: one containing only stimulus propositions, another containing stimulus and response propositions, and a third containing stimulus, response, and meaning propositions. Subjects also completed questionnaires measuring imagery ability and anxiety sensitivity. Consistent with McNeil et al.'s findings, agoraphobics were verbally but rarely physiologically responsive to fear scripts. Fear scripts including meaning propositions were not more effective than those including only stimulus and response, or only stimulus propositions. Physiological responsivity to fear scripts was unrelated to imagery ability and to anxiety sensitivity. Finally, in contrast to McNeil et al.'s agoraphobics, our subjects had average, not poor, imagery ability.