Behaviour research and therapy
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The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of anxiety sensitivity (AS) as a factor relevant to pain and pain persistence. Two studies were conducted to examine the relationship between AS, body vigilance and the experience of pain in non-clinical samples. Study 1 investigated the relationship between AS and body vigilance that was operationalized by the detection latency for innocuous electrical stimuli; trait anxiety and neuroticism were also included as covariates. ⋯ No significant differences were found in pain and distress ratings. Results from both studies support the importance of AS in body vigilance and the experience of pain. The theoretical, preventive and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
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This study explores the utility of a pain IAT for the assessment of dysfunctional cognitive beliefs in chronic pain patients before and after a cognitive behaviour therapy. A patient group suffering from chronic pain (N=25) treated with a 4-week cognitive behavioural psychotherapy is compared with an untreated healthy control group (N=27) at two points in time. In addition, both groups completed a self-esteem questionnaire (Rosenberg-scale) and a self-esteem IAT. ⋯ The pain IAT was able to differentiate between chronic pain patients and healthy controls before the treatment. Most important, pain-related implicit associations could be shown to change over the course of treatment in the clinical group of chronic pain patients. Results provide first evidence for an application of the IAT in chronic pain research.
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Though generalization of conditioned fear has been implicated as a central feature of pathological anxiety, surprisingly little is known about the psychobiology of this learning phenomenon in humans. Whereas animal work has frequently applied methods to examine generalization gradients to study the gradual weakening of the conditioned-fear response as the test stimulus increasingly differs from the conditioned stimulus (CS), to our knowledge no psychobiological studies of such gradients have been conducted in humans over the last 40 years. The current effort validates an updated generalization paradigm incorporating more recent methods for the objective measurement of anxiety (fear-potentiated startle). ⋯ The eight rings of intermediary size serve as generalization stimuli (GSs) and create a continuum-of-similarity from CS+ to CS-. Both startle data and online self-report ratings demonstrate continuous decreases in generalization as the presented stimulus becomes less similar to the CS+. The current paradigm represents an updated and efficacious tool with which to study fear generalization--a central, yet understudied conditioning-correlate of pathologic anxiety.
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According to cognitive models of anxiety, attentional biases for threat may cause or maintain anxiety states. Previous research using spatial cueing tasks has been interpreted in terms of difficulty in disengaging attention from threat in anxious individuals, as indicated by contrasts of response times (RTs) from threat cue versus neutral cue trials. However, on spatial cueing tasks, differences in RT between threat cue and neutral cue trials may stem from a slowing effect of threat on RT, as well as effects on allocation of visuospatial attention. ⋯ Results indicated that interpretation of the anxiety-related bias for threat depended on whether the effect of response slowing was taken into account. The study illustrates an important problem in using the modified spatial cueing task to assess components of threat-related attentional bias. As this experimental method may reflect both threat-related attentional cueing and response slowing effects, it cannot be assumed to provide pure measures of shift or disengagement components of attention bias.
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Unlike in fear conditioning, little attention has been devoted to extinction and renewal in appetitive conditioning, despite its relevance for extinction-based addiction treatments. We developed a paradigm, using a specific tray as a conditioned stimulus (CS) for eating chocolate (unconditioned stimulus, US), to investigate the effects of context change on acquisition and extinction of conditioned chocolate craving using an ABA renewal design. In Study 1 (n=32), participants successfully acquired chocolate craving, but unlike what is commonly observed in fear conditioning, craving did not extinguish. ⋯ US-expectancy data showed acquisition, extinction and renewal in the ABA group. The craving data did not follow this pattern, suggesting different mechanisms for craving and US expectancy. Similarities and differences between craving and US expectancy, as well as practical implications, are discussed.