A Wenzel1, C S Holt. 1. Department of Psychology, Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, USA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The present study applied MacLeod, Mathews & Tata's (1986) dot probe attentional deployment methodology to individuals with specific phobias. DESIGN: Attentional deployment towards spider-related, blood-related, positive, negative, and neutral words was examined. METHOD: Individuals with either spider phobia (N = 13) or blood/injury phobia (N = 14) and non-anxious controls (N = 14) completed the dot probe attentional deployment task. RESULTS: Individuals with specific phobias did not demonstrate an attentional bias towards phobia-related stimuli relevant to their particular fears. CONCLUSION: Semantic-based information processing paradigms may not be sufficiently potent to demonstrate biased performance towards threatening stimuli in individuals with mild specific phobias who are otherwise healthy.
OBJECTIVES: The present study applied MacLeod, Mathews & Tata's (1986) dot probe attentional deployment methodology to individuals with specific phobias. DESIGN: Attentional deployment towards spider-related, blood-related, positive, negative, and neutral words was examined. METHOD: Individuals with either spider phobia (N = 13) or blood/injury phobia (N = 14) and non-anxious controls (N = 14) completed the dot probe attentional deployment task. RESULTS: Individuals with specific phobias did not demonstrate an attentional bias towards phobia-related stimuli relevant to their particular fears. CONCLUSION: Semantic-based information processing paradigms may not be sufficiently potent to demonstrate biased performance towards threatening stimuli in individuals with mild specific phobias who are otherwise healthy.