Spider phobics more easily see a spider in morphed schematic pictures.

Iris-Tatjana Kolassa,Frauke Musial,Ivailo Partchev,Stephan Kolassa,Arlette Buchmann,Romy Lauche,Wolfgang Hr Miltner

doi:10.1186/1744-9081-3-59

Iris-Tatjana Kolassa, Frauke Musial + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-3-59

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Abstract

BackgroundIndividuals with social phobia are more likely to misinterpret ambiguous social situations as more threatening, i.e. they show an interpretive bias. This study investigated whether such a bias also exists in specific phobia.MethodsIndividuals with spider phobia or social phobia, spider aficionados and non-phobic controls saw morphed stimuli that gradually transformed from a schematic picture of a flower into a schematic picture of a spider by shifting the outlines of the petals until they turned into spider legs. Participants' task was to decide whether each stimulus was more similar to a spider, a flower or to neither object while EEG was recorded.ResultsAn interpretive bias was found in spider phobia on a behavioral level: with the first opening of the petals of the flower anchor, spider phobics rated the stimuli as more unpleasant and arousing than the control groups and showed an elevated latent trait to classify a stimulus as a spider and a response-time advantage for spider-like stimuli. No cortical correlates on the level of ERPs of this interpretive bias could be identified. However, consistent with previous studies, social and spider phobic persons exhibited generally enhanced visual P1 amplitudes indicative of hypervigilance in phobia.ConclusionResults suggest an interpretive bias and generalization of phobia-specific responses in specific phobia. Similar effects have been observed in other anxiety disorders, such as social phobia and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Highlights

Individuals with social phobia are more likely to misinterpret ambiguous social situations as more threatening, i.e. they show an interpretive bias
An interpretive bias was found in spider phobia on a behavioral level: with the first opening of the petals of the flower anchor, spider phobics rated the stimuli as more unpleasant and arousing than the control groups and showed an elevated latent trait to classify a stimulus as a spider and a response-time advantage for spider-like stimuli
Whereas groups did not differ in valence ratings for picture 1, a specific contrast revealed that spider phobic individuals rated pictures 2–7 as more unpleasant than the other groups, t(55) = -3.70, p = .0005, while spider aficionados rated pictures 6 and 7 as more pleasant than controls and social phobic individuals, t(40) = 2.70, p =

Summary

Introduction

Individuals with social phobia are more likely to misinterpret ambiguous social situations as more threatening, i.e. they show an interpretive bias. This study investigated whether such a bias exists in specific phobia. Cognitive biases have been assumed to play an important role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Biases in anxiety disorders have been broadly categorized in empirical research as biases affecting the three general stages of information processing (1) attention and the encoding of information; (2) elaboration and interpretation; and (3) storage and retrieval from memory [1,2]. Several studies showed that individuals with social phobia are more likely to misinterpret (ambiguous) social situations as more threatening and to draw more negative inferences from social stimuli than controls [3,4,5]. Spider phobic participants were more likely to report having seen a spider or a beetle, which was interpreted as applying a more liberal criterion both to highly negative spiders and to slightly negative beetles

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