Abstract
Anxiety sensitivity (AS) refers to the tendency to interpret anxiety related physical sensations as dangerous (S. Reiss & R. J. McNally, 1985). We hypothesized that individuals with elevated AS would show a difficulty in inhibiting the threat relevant meaning of homographs (words with two meanings, e.g., faint). To test this hypothesis, we used a modified version of Gernsbacher's inhibition paradigm in which participants were first presented with a sentence (e.g., “The car sounds were faint.”) and then a probe word (e.g., “pass-out”) and were asked whether or not the probe word was related to the meaning of the sentence (M. A. Gernsbacher, K. R. Varner, & M. E. Faust, 1990). One half of the sentences ended in a homograph, and one half ended in a nonhomograph word. Results revealed that individuals with elevated AS showed difficulty in inhibiting the threat-relevant meaning of homographs when the interval between the presentation of the sentence and the probe word was short (i.e., 100 ms), but that low AS participants did not. This difficulty in inhibiting threat relevant meanings may be a vulnerability factor involved in elevated AS, as well as the development of panic disorder.
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Amir, N., Beard, C. Inhibitory Difficulties and Anxiety Sensitivity. Cognitive Therapy and Research 28, 283–292 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:COTR.0000031803.85597.aa
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:COTR.0000031803.85597.aa