Archival ReportFearful Imagery in Social Phobia: Generalization, Comorbidity, and Physiological Reactivity
Section snippets
Participants
Participants (81% Caucasian) were assessed at the University of Florida Fear and Anxiety Disorders Clinic: 75 treatment-seeking adults with principal diagnoses of social phobia and 75 community control participants matched for gender, age, race, and education, all without psychosis or major physical disease.
Diagnostic Classification
Diagnostic groups were established using the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule for DSM-IV (ADIS-IV) (36). In cases of multiple Axis I disorders, diagnostic primacy was determined according
Baseline Physiology
No reliable differences emerged between patients and control participants in blink magnitude for intertrial startle probes or for SCL or orbicularis EMG activity in the 1-second baseline prior to script onset. However, patients showed greater baseline corrugator EMG tension, F(1,148) = 9.00, p < .001, and more rapid heart rate (nearly 8 beats per minute [bpm] faster than control participants), F(1,148) = 18.29, p < .001.4
Evaluative Judgments
Ratings of unpleasantness (Table 2) varied over imagery contents, F(3,145)
Discussion
Patients diagnosed with social phobia as a whole exceeded control participants in defensive reactivity when imagining either idiographic fear or standard social threat scenes but did not differ when imagining contents presumed to be fearful for all participants. This pattern emerged in startle potentiation and in autonomic responding implicating a concordant, general hypersensitivity of the defense system to clinically relevant imagery. This psychophysiological pattern is consistent with
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