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.
Rights Holder
Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies
Provenance
Received from author
Language
English (eng)
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
Publication Title
Cognitive and Behavioral Practice
Volume
29(2)
First Page
485
Last Page
493
ISSN
1878-187X
Recommended Citation
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