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

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Pages 1013-1022 | Received 13 Aug 2012, Accepted 05 Dec 2012, Published online: 26 Feb 2013
 

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.

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).

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