Effect of phobic anxiety on the orienting response

Abstract

Generalized, chronic anxiety has been shown to result in attentional deficits using cardiac and electrodermal orienting responses as indicators. The present study attempted to replicate these findings for different degrees of phobic anxiety. Phobic volunteers were exposed to a slide with phobic content and concurrently presented with tones. Fearfulness was defined in terms of the initial cardiac response to the slide. Ss with the most marked initial cardiac acceleration also exhibited a long-latency cardiac response peaking at around 20 sec after slide onset. Unlike-non-responders and ‘decelerators’, ‘accelerators’ also yielded a marked cardiac deceleration and, together with ‘decelerators’ an electrodermal response to the first tone. Results are at variance with those found in chronically anxious individuals and it is concluded that depending on the source of threat, chronic and phobic anxiety states differ with regard to direction of attention, focusing on internal cues in the former and on environmental cues in the latter.