Fears and phobias: reliability and heritability

Kendler, Kenneth S.; Karkowski, Laura M.; Prescott, Carol A.

doi:10.1017/s0033291799008429

Cited by 212 publications

(137 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The only large twin sample that has comprehensively examined the genetics of phobias in adults is the Virginia Twin Registry. Analyses from that sample have found that genetics is largely responsible for twin resemblance in females (10) and males (11), with reliability-corrected estimates of heritability that ranged from 0.46 for situational phobia to 0.67 for agoraphobia (12). Two other broad findings emerged from these analyses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

The Genetic Covariation Between Fear Conditioning and Self-Report Fears

Hettema

Annas

Neale

et al. 2008

Biological Psychiatry

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Background-Fear conditioning is a traditional model for the acquisition of phobias, while behavioral therapies utilize processes underlying extinction to treat phobic and other anxiety disorders. Furthermore, fear conditioning has been proposed as an endophenotype for genetic studies of anxiety disorders. While prior studies have demonstrated that fear conditioning and self-report fears are heritable, no studies have determined whether they share a common genetic basis.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

The Genetic Covariation Between Fear Conditioning and Self-Report Fears

Hettema

Annas

Neale

et al. 2008

Biological Psychiatry

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“…More recently, Kendler and colleagues provided a higher heritability estimate of SAD (= .51), correcting for unreliability by means of conducting repeated assessments 8 years apart (Kendler, Karkowski, & Prescott, 1999). A recent meta-analysis of twin studies reported a heritability estimate of .65 (Beatty, Heisel, Hall, Levine, & La France, 2002).…”

Section: Twin and Family Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional biases in social anxiety: An investigation using the inattentional blindness paradigm

Lee

Telch

2008

Behaviour Research and Therapy

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Social anxiety disorder is the third most common mental disorder with the lifetime prevalence rate of 13.3% in the US population. Typically, it causes significant impairment in a wide range of functioning and follows a chronic, unremitting course if untreated. Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in clinical research aimed at examining underlying mechanisms maintaining social anxiety.One line of research has investigated attentional biases in social anxiety, using various cognitive experiment paradigms, including the emotional Stroop and the modified dotprobe tasks. However, overall findings are equivocal about the nature of attentional biases in social anxiety and several methodological problems limit the interpretability of the data. The present study examined attentional biases associated with social anxiety using a new research paradigm in the field of anxiety disorders: the inattentional blindness paradigm. This paradigm presents a social cue in the absence of the subjects' expectation while they are engaged in a cognitively demanding task, thereby enabling the v more purely attentional aspect of information processing to be examined reducing the influence of potential response biases or effortful strategies. Two independent experiments were conducted using nonclinical student samples consisting of individuals high in social anxiety (HSAs) versus individuals low in social anxiety (LSAs) based on the static and sustained inattentional blindness tasks. Overall, results revealed that HSAs were more likely to detect or identify a socially-threatening cue, relative to LSAs; whereas LSAs were more likely to detect or identify a non-threatening social cue, relative to HSAs. These findings were observed only in the presence of a bogus-speech manipulation. These data suggest the promising utility of the inattentional blindness paradigm in investigating attentional biases in social anxiety and perhaps other psychopathological conditions. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.vi

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“…Indeed, focusing upon a single measure of phobias may have limitations, as suggested by research demonstrating that information about fear and phobias assessed at personal interviews shows substantial unreliability (15).…”

Section: Finding Gene-environment Interactions For Phobiasmentioning

confidence: 99%