Stimulus significance and bilateral SCRs to potentially phobic pictures.

Automatic facial responses to briefly presented emotional stimuli in autism spectrum disorder

“…It has previously been suggested that individuals with ASDs will only show spontaneous mimicry of facial expressions or affective scenes when the task sufficiently engages them in emotion processing. For example, if their attention is directed to the stimuli through explicit instructions to label the emotional expression (Oberman et al, 2009), if the emotional facial expression is coupled with an emotional vocal expression (Magnée et al, 2007), or if the affective stimuli is sufficiently extreme or arousing in nature (Mathersul et al, 2013a). The results of the present study suggest that briefly presented emotional faces do not sufficiently engage the mimicry system in these individuals, similar to previous findings regarding passive viewing of emotional stimuli for protracted duration (Beall et al, 2008;Hermans et al, 2009;McIntosh et al, 2006).…”

“…Similarly, it has been suggested that ASDs may be associated with a disruption in the allocation of emotional significance to facial stimuli (Pinkham, Hopfinger, Pelphrey, Piven, & Penn, 2008). Indeed, recent studies have shown that individuals with ASDs will only show spontaneous mimicry when the task sufficiently engages them in emotion processing (Magnée, de Gelder, van Engeland, & Kemner, 2007;Mathersul, McDonald, & Rushby, 2013a;Oberman et al, 2009). Current conceptualisations of this social motivation hypothesis propose that deficits in ASDs occur not just at the basic behavioural level, but also encompass social orienting/attention and social maintaining (Chevallier, Kohls, Troiani, Brodkin, & Schultz, 2012).…”

“…Past research generally suggests that autonomic responses are disrupted in individuals with ASDs (Bal et al, 2010;Bölte, Feineis-Matthews, & Poustka, 2008;Corona, Dissanayake, Arbelle, Wellington, & Sigman, 1998;Hubert, Wicker, Monfardini, & Deruelle, 2009;Jansen et al, 2006;Joseph, Ehrman, McNally, & Keehn, 2008;Mathersul et al, 2013a;Mathersul, McDonald, & Rushby, 2013b;Van Hecke et al, 2009), although this is not always the case (e.g., Ben Shalom et al, 2006). Importantly though, one recent study demonstrated (through the use of SCL and SCR) disruptions in the allocation of attention and (emotional) significance to socially-relevant stimuli (neutral faces) in ASDs, whilst stimulus registration/detection (ECD) remained intact (Mathersul, McDonald, & Rushby, 2013c).…”

The etiology of phobias: a nonassociative account

“…Moreover, it is not clear at this point that any of the supportive findings require the preparedness explanation. Various accounts focussing on ontogenetic preparedness (Delprato, 1980), animateness (Carr, 1979), latent inhibition (Carr, 1979;Levis, 1979), prior fear levels (McNally & Foa, 1986;McNally & Reiss, 1984), CS salience (Ohman et al 1976), CS prepotency (Marks, 1987), expectancy biases (Davey, 1992), and stimulus significance (Maltzman & Boyd, 1984) have been proposed as alternative explanations of the data. Though many of these have not been supported to date (see further, McNally, 1987), some still require adequate testing.…”

Face recognition and emotional valence: Processing without awareness by neurologically intact participants does not simulate covert recognition in prosopagnosia

“…Some support for this hypothesis comes from previous related studies. Maltzman and Boyd (1984) showed that visual images rated as either strongly pleasant or strongly unpleasant resulted in larger SCRs than did neutral images. Ohman and Soares (1994) found that spider-or snake-fearful participants gave larger SCRs to feared stimuli than to neutral flowers or mushrooms.…”