Case Study: A Quantitative Report of Early Attention, Fear, Disgust, and Avoidance in Specific Phobia for Buttons

Publication Date

5-2022

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Koumpounophobia, Object phobia, Emotion

Abstract

Specific phobia is characterized by elevated early attention to the phobic object, negative emotion, and avoidance. Typically, phobic objects are biologically relevant, such as potentially threatening snakes or spiders, or potentially contaminating needles or rodents. It is unclear whether the same early attention, emotion, and avoidance responses can be observed in phobia for uncommon, nonbiologically relevant objects, such as buttons (koumpounophobia). In an experimental case study, we measured early attention (detection rates to briefly presented images before a backward mask), emotion, and avoidance to clothing buttons in a button-phobic participant. We compared these responses to nonphobic objects (zippers), and to well-matched control participants. We observed elevated early attention, fear, and disgust to buttons, which did not generalize to nonphobic emotional stimuli. In addition, we observed elevated avoidance of buttons, which did generalize to normatively fearful and disgusting pictures. If replicated, our results indicate that nonbiologically prepared phobic objects elicit similar elevated early attention, emotion, and avoidance as biologically prepared phobic objects. The finding that avoidance was the only response that generalized to nonphobic objects may have treatment implications—namely, that therapeutic attempts to reduce avoidance might consider including a variety of objects, not just the phobic object.

Copyright Date

4-19-2022

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

McRae, K., Ciesielski, B. G., Pereira, S. C., & Gross, J. J. (2022). Case study: A quantitative report of early attention, fear, disgust, and avoidance in specific phobia for buttons. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 29(2), 485-493. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2020.08.001

Rights Holder

Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies

Provenance

Received from author

Language

English (eng)

Publication Title

Cognitive and Behavioral Practice

Volume

29(2)

First Page

485

Last Page

493

ISSN

1878-187X

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