Abstract
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.
Highlights
Individuals suffering from specific phobias exhibit an excessive and unreasonable fear of their phobia-relevant objects or feared situations
The question arises whether mnemonic processing of feared objects varies with inter-individual fear status? One might expect that individuals with specific phobia show better memory of their feared objects due to stronger emotional arousal elicited by these events
[14] Thorpe and Salkovskis [13] observed that individuals with spider phobia did not differ from non-fearful controls in their recognition memory for live spiders presented in video clips
Summary
Individuals suffering from specific phobias exhibit an excessive and unreasonable fear of their phobia-relevant objects or feared situations. Spider phobic participants recalled fewer spider related words (e.g., cobweb, fangs) compared to neutral words, in the presence of a live spider [14] Thorpe and Salkovskis [13] observed that individuals with spider phobia did not differ from non-fearful controls in their recognition memory (hits and false alarms) for live spiders presented in video clips. Previous ERP studies found that this later centro-parietal old/new effect is more pronounced for emotional, relative to neutral words [30], [31], facial expressions [32] and natural scenes [23], indicating that better recognition of emotional events is related to explicit recollection [6]. We expected to replicate previous findings of better recognition memory and larger ERP old/new difference for emotional (unpleasant and spider pictures) pictures, compared to neutral pictures. We tested whether such ERP differences occur during recognition when old and pictures are presented
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