The effect of very brief exposure on experienced fear after in vivo exposure

Abstract

Two experiments tested the effect of exposure to masked phobic stimuli at a very brief stimulus onset asynchrony on reducing the subjective experience of fear caused by in vivo exposure to a feared object. In the main experiment, 35 spider-fearful and 35 non-fearful participants were identified with a questionnaire and a Behavioural Avoidance Test (BAT) with a live tarantula. One week later, they were individually administered one of two continuous series of masked images: spiders or flowers. They engaged in the BAT again immediately thereafter. They provided ratings of subjective fear at the end of each BAT (pre- and post-manipulation). Very brief exposure to images of spiders reduced the fearful group's and not the non-fearful group's experience of fear at the end of the BAT. This effect was replicated with another sample of 26 spider-fearful participants from the same population. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• Fear
• Unconscious
• Masking
• Exposure
• Phobia

Notes

¹By default, SuperLab erases the target stimulus before the masking stimulus is presented on the next refresh cycle. This makes the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between the target and masking stimuli approximately 25 ms (SuperLab, personal communication, 2008).