Phylo- and ontogenetic fears and the expectation of danger: Differences between spider- and flight-phobic subjects in cognitive and physiological responses to disorder-specific stimuli.

Abstract

To compare specific phobias with an assumed phylogenetic or ontogenetic origin in responses to fear-relevant (FR) stimuli, 17 spider-and 17 flight-phobic participants were exposed to pictures of spiders, flight accidents, or mushrooms randomly followed by either a startling noise or nothing else. While both groups showed a disorder-specific expectancy bias, only spider-phobic participants exhibited a disorder-specific covariation bias. Spider-phobic participants also showed enhanced skin conductance responses (SCRs), event-related brain potentials (ERPs), and startle responses triggered by disorderspecific FR pictures while flight-phobic participants showed only disorder-specific enhanced SCRs. In sum, our direct comparison between ontogenetic and phylogenetic phobias revealed that the former is characterized by biased and enhanced responses triggered by disorder-specific FR stimuli presumably based on a biological preparedness.

Evidence for an encounter expectancy bias in fear of spiders

“…Spider fearful individuals tended to falsely recall more spider-related words than neutral words (words that had not actually been presented before). On the other hand, the Mühlberger et al (2006) study with spider and flight phobics did not reveal any difference in picture frequency estimates for phobic versus nonphobic content.…”

“…Interestingly this overestimation was limited to phylogenetic threat stimuli and was not obtained with ontogenetic threat stimuli such as weapons (de Jong et al, 1992). Mühlberger, Wiedemann, Herrmann, and Pauli (2006) showed that the a priori expectancy bias did not differ between phylogenetic phobia (spider phobia) and ontogenetic phobia (flight phobia). Both spider phobics and flight phobics exhibited an overestimation of the likelihood that their particularly feared type of threat would be Encounter expectancy bias in fear of spiders 4 followed by a startling white noise (cf.…”

“…The ads explicitly specified these project aims. Persons interested in the study were subjected to a telephone interview and checked for DSM-IV and ICD-10 criteria for presence/absence of spider phobia (adapted from Mühlberger et al, 2006) and low snake fear. Twenty-seven percent of all individuals contacting the experimenters did meet the selection criteria and participated in the study.…”

ADORA2A Gene Variation, Caffeine, and Emotional Processing: A Multi-level Interaction on Startle Reflex

“…(3) Converging evidence points toward a crucial role of unflexible and maladaptive processing of emotional stimuli in the pathogenesis of anxiety and anxiety disorders: anxiety-related emotional stimuli are rated as more threatening by patients than by control individuals and seem to be processed differently within the limbic-medial prefrontal circuit, partly driven by genetic factors (eg, Domschke et al, 2006Domschke et al, , 2008bDomschke and Dannlowski, 2010;Etkin, 2010;Lang and Cuthbert, 1984;Mathews, 1993;Mühlberger et al, 2006Mühlberger et al, , 2007Pauli et al, 1996;Wiedemann et al, 1999).…”

Fear and Phobia: A Critical Review and the Rational-Choice Theory of Neurosis

“…Here too, there is some inconsistency among investigators. While some studies found no differences between the two types of stimuli (Davey, 1995;Davey & Craigie, 1997;Davey & Dixon, 1996;Honeybourne, Matchett, & Davey, 1993;Lovibond, Siddle, & Bond, 1993), others reported that both arousal and conditioning are more intense to phylogenic fear-relevant stimuli than to ontogenetic fear-relevant stimuli (Mühlberger, Wiedemann, Herrmann, & Pauli, 2006;Öhman & Mineka, 2001). Findings also show that fear-relevant stimuli capture subjects' attention and are perceived more rapidly than fear-irrelevant stimuli (Öhman, Flykt, & Esteves, 2001;Waters & Lipp, 2008).…”