title: Preattentive bias for snake words in snake phobia?
abstract: Stroop interference and skin conductance responses (SCRs) for words related to snakes, spiders, flowers, and mushrooms were studied in a group of women (n=40) with snake phobia who were randomised to a stress or no-stress condition. The 21 low-stress snake phobics showed Stroop interference for unmasked (but not for masked) snake words, compared with 21 age- and sex-matched controls. Stroop interference was not significantly different between high-stress and low-stress snake phobics. No support for stronger SCRs for masked snake words was found in snake phobics in a lexical decision task with masked presentations of the same words. The lack of a masked Stroop interference in snake phobics suggests a possible difference in cognitive-emotional mechanisms underlying specific phobia vs. other anxiety disorders that deserves further investigation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. jenny.wikstrom@cns.ki.se
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wikström
authors.forename: Lars-Gunnar
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Lundh
authors.forename: Joakim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Westerlund
authors.forename: Lennart
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Högman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D012911:Snakes; D013315:Stress, Psychological