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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1999

Common fears: a comparison of adolescents' self-generated and fear survey schedule generated fears.

Investigations into normative fear in adolescence have indicated that the most common fears are consistently death-related and danger-related. Assessments have most commonly been made from self-reports on fear survey schedules. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to determine whether adolescents would provide responses comparable to those generated through the use of a fear survey schedule when asked to list their 3 greatest fears. A total of 439 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years (237 girls, 201 boys, 1 sex not reported) listed their greatest fears; then they completed the 78-item Fear Survey Schedule for Children-II (E. Gullone & N. J. King, 1992). Consistent with past research, the 10 most common fears generated via the fear schedule related to death and danger. However, on the whole, the self-generated fears deviated from the death and danger theme, also including fear of failure, fear of animals, and fear of the unknown. A tendency toward global responses in self-generated fears appeared to encompass the majority of specific death-related fears included in the fear schedule, thus allowing for other predominant fears to be listed among the 3 most common.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Observational conditioning of fear to fear-relevant versus fear-irrelevant stimuli in rhesus monkeys.

Two experiments examined whether superior observational conditioning of fear occurs in observer rhesus monkeys that watch model monkeys exhibit an intense fear of fear-relevant, as compared with fear-irrelevant, stimuli. In both experiments, videotapes of model monkeys behaving fearfully were spliced so that it appeared that the models were reacting fearfully either to fear-relevant stimuli (toy snakes or a toy crocodile), or to fear-irrelevant stimuli (flowers or a toy rabbit). Observer groups watched one of four kinds of videotapes for 12 sessions. Results indicated that observers acquired a fear of fear-relevant stimuli (toy snakes and toy crocodile), but not of fear-irrelevant stimuli (flowers and toy rabbit). Implications of the present results for the preparedness theory of phobias are discussed.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Fear-avoidance beliefs as measured by the fear-avoidance beliefs questionnaire: change in fear-avoidance beliefs questionnaire is predictive of change in self-report of disability and pain intensity for patients with acute low back pain.

OBJECTIVES: The purposes of this study were to investigate the association among measures of fear-avoidance beliefs, pain intensity, and lumbar flexion and to determine if changes in these measures were predictive of treatment outcome following physical therapy for acute low back pain. It was hypothesized that items of the Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire would be correlated with concurrent measures of pain intensity and lumbar flexion. In addition, it was hypothesized that changes in fear-avoidance beliefs would be predictive of changes in self-report of pain intensity and disability. STUDY DESIGN: Patients underwent a standard examination that included measures of fear-avoidance beliefs, pain intensity, lumbar flexion, and disability from low back pain. Patients were then re-examined after 4 weeks of physical therapy treatment. PATIENTS: Sixty-three patients with acute low back pain enrolled in a clinical trial of physical therapy treatment. RESULTS: Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire items were consistently correlated with lumbar flexion, but not with measures of pain intensity. Pearson correlations indicated that changes in disability were significantly associated with changes in fear-avoidance beliefs and pain intensity, but not changes in lumbar flexion. Changes in fear-avoidance beliefs explained significant amounts of variance in changes in average pain intensity while controlling for changes in lumbar flexion. Changes in fear-avoidance beliefs explained significant amounts of variance in changes in disability while controlling for changes in average pain intensity. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that fear-avoidance beliefs have a similar association with pain intensity, physical impairment, and disability for patients with acute and chronic low back pain. This study provides preliminary support for the use of the Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire as an outcome measure for patients with acute low back pain.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed2005

Fear potentiation and fear inhibition in a human fear-potentiated startle paradigm.

BACKGROUND: The inability to suppress excessive fear or anxiety is a significant clinical problem. In the laboratory, extinction is a preferred method for the study of fear inhibition; however, in this paradigm the same stimulus causes both elicitation (excitation) and inhibition of fear, making it difficult to know whether an experimental manipulation that affects extinction does so by affecting one or both of these processes. For this reason, we sought to develop a behavioral procedure in humans that would render a stimulus primarily inhibitory. METHODS: We adapted a conditional discrimination procedure (AX+/BX-), previously validated in animals, to a human fear-potentiated startle paradigm. Forty-one healthy volunteers were presented with one set of colored lights paired with the delivery of aversive airblasts to the throat (AX+) and a different series of lights presented without airblasts (BX-). RESULTS: Participants exhibited fear potentiation to AX+, discrimination between AX+ and BX-, and transfer of fear inhibition to A in an AB compound test but not in an AC compound test. CONCLUSIONS: We believe this procedure will advance clinical research on fear disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder and phobias, by providing an effective and relatively independent measure of fear potentiation and fear inhibition.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Fear-relevant change detection in spider-fearful and non-fearful participants.

Features of threatening stimuli are proposed to be processed fast and automatically, as they call for immediate attention. Phobic patients typically exhibit these attentional biases for stimuli that are relevant for their particular type of fear. In the present study, it was examined whether a change detection paradigm can be used to study attentional bias for fear-related stimuli. Twenty-five spider-fearful and 25 non-fearful participants were confronted with a series of pictures, in which sometimes a spider gradually appeared, sometimes a fear-irrelevant stimulus appeared, and sometimes no change occurred. Participants had to indicate whenever they noticed a change in the picture. Results showed a pattern of fear-relevant change detection. That is, spider changes were more frequently detected than fear-irrelevant changes, and spider-fearful participants detected more spider changes than non-fearful controls. Further, it was found that high-trait anxious participants did not detect more changes than low-trait anxious participants.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

The Koala Fear Questionnaire: a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in pre-school and primary school children.

The Koala Fear Questionnaire (KFQ) is a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in children aged between 4 and 12 years. The current article presents six studies which examined the reliability and validity of the KFQ. Study 1 (N=108) demonstrated that the visual fear scales of Koala bears as employed in the KFQ are highly comparable to the standard 3-point scales that are used in other childhood fear measures. Study 2 (N=163) provided support for the convergent validity of the KFQ in a sample of 8- to 14-year-old children. That is, the scale correlated substantially with alternative measures of childhood fear and anxiety. Study 3 (N=189) showed that the KFQ possesses good internal consistency and test-retest stability in a group of 8- to 11-year-old children. The results of Studies 4 (N=129) and 5 (N=176) indicated that the KFQ is suitable for children aged 4 to 6 years and demonstrated that the psychometric properties of the scale in younger children are highly similar to those obtained in older children. Study 6 (N=926) showed that the factor structure of the KFQ was theoretically meaningful: although the data clearly pointed in the direction of one factor of general fearfulness, spurs of the commonly found five-factor solution of childhood fear were found in the KFQ. Altogether, the KFQ seems to be a valuable addition to the instrumentarium of clinicians and researchers who are working with fearful and anxious children.

Aging↗
PubMed2003

Fear information and the development of fears during childhood: effects on implicit fear responses and behavioural avoidance.

Field, Argyris and Knowles (Behav Res Ther 39 (2001) 1259), and Field, Hamilton, Knowles and Plews (Behav Res Thera 41 (2003) 113) have developed a prospective paradigm for testing Rachman's (Behav Res Ther 15 (1977) 375) proposition that fear information is important in the development of fears and phobias in children. Despite this paradigm being an advance on retrospective reports, the research so far has been restricted to self-reported fear beliefs measured after the information is given. This gives rise to two possible shortcomings: (1) the effects could simply reflect demand characteristics resulting from children conforming to the experimental demands, and (2) although fear information changes beliefs, this might not translate into the behavioural change that would be expected if this information has a powerful effect relevant to the development of pathological fear. This paper describes an experiment that attempts to address these concerns by improving Field et al.'s (2001, 2003) basic paradigm but with the addition of two measures: (1) a behavioural measure of avoidance, and (2) an implicit attitude task that should not be susceptible to deliberate attempts to conform to experimental demands. The result showed that negative and positive information have dramatic, and opposite, effects on self-reported fear beliefs, behavioural avoidance and implicit attitudes. There were no effects of gender on any of these results. This study fully supports Rachman's model and suggests that past work does not merely reflect demand characteristics and that fear information increases behavioural avoidance as well as fear beliefs.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

Fearfulness and sex in F2 Roman rats: males display more fear though both sexes share the same fearfulness traits.

The pattern of sex differences in a large sample (about 400 for each sex) of F2-generation rats, derived from inbred Roman high- and low-avoidance strains differing in fearfulness and brain functioning, was investigated. We obtained measures from responses to a battery of novel/threatening tests [open field (OF), plus maze (PM), hole board (HB), activity (A), and acoustic startle reflex (ASR)] as well as learned fear paradigms [classical fear conditioning (CFC) and shuttlebox avoidance conditioning (SAC)]. The results showed that almost all behaviors assessed fit with a pattern of unidirectional sex effects characterized by male rats as being more fearful than females: males defecated more than females in the OF, PM, HB, ASR, and CFC; ambulated less in the OF, PM, A, and SAC; showed more self-grooming in PM and HB; explored the open arms of the PM and the holes of the HB less; displayed enhanced ASR; and showed poorer performance in the SAC task. We applied two factor analyses to each sex showing that, in general, they shared a common three-factor structure: a Learned Fear Factor comprising SAC and CFC responding, a Fear of Heights/Open Spaces Factor with the highest loadings for open arm behavior in the PM, and an Emotional Reactivity Factor, mainly grouping defecations, ambulation, and self-grooming. These results indicate that the essential components of fearful behavior are similar for both sexes in an inbred but genetically heterogeneous population.

Animals↗
PubMed1987

Panic disorder and agoraphobia: fear of fear or fear of the symptoms produced by hyperventilation?

Two versions of the fear-of-fear hypothesis of panic disorder are discussed. The fear-of-the-somatic-effects-of-fear version, which is distinguished from the classical conditioning version, is compared with the hyperventilation theory of panic disorder and agoraphobia. The fear-of-the-somatic-effects-of-fear hypothesis is criticized on the basis of its inability to explain adequately (a) the initiation of panic attacks, (b) the growth in intensity of panic attacks, and (c) the termination of panic attacks. The tenability of the hyperventilation theory is supported by evidence from programs of treatment derived from the basic assumptions of the theory.

Agoraphobia↗
PubMed2000

Dishabituation processes in height fear and dental fear: an indirect test of the non-associative model of fear acquisition.

The fear dishabituation hypothesis described in the non-associative model of fear acquisition was tested in a longitudinal birth cohort study. Results were consistent with height fear and phobia dishabituation. That is, 're-emergence' of a fear of heights occurred between age 11 and 18 years among individuals who reported higher levels of non-specific stress at age 15. Interestingly, there was no evidence for dental fear dishabituation--a finding consistent with the non-associative model of fear acquisition. Strengths and weaknesses of the study were considered and the results discussed in relation to laboratory-based findings on (dis)habituation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Fears, phobias, and preparedness: toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning.

An evolved module for fear elicitation and fear learning with 4 characteristics is proposed. (a) The fear module is preferentially activated in aversive contexts by stimuli that are fear relevant in an evolutionary perspective. (b) Its activation to such stimuli is automatic. (c) It is relatively impenetrable to cognitive control. (d) It originates in a dedicated neural circuitry, centered on the amygdala. Evidence supporting these propositions is reviewed from conditioning studies, both in humans and in monkeys; illusory correlation studies; studies using unreportable stimuli; and studies from animal neuroscience. The fear module is assumed to mediate an emotional level of fear learning that is relatively independent and dissociable from cognitive learning of stimulus relationships.

Animals↗
PubMed1995

Feared stimuli are expected in specific situations: the use of situationalism and fear expectancy in a self-report measurement of fears.

The Wildland Fear Expectancy Scale was developed to measure apprehension about visiting forested areas. The scale was administered to 1,337 middle-school and high-school students in the southeastern United States. Use of an expectancy approach and reference to a specific situation (day trip to a forest) produced results that diverged from studies that used generic fear surveys, although direct comparisons are not possible. The catastrophic event items were ranked lowest in contrast to general fear surveys, in which they are often at the top of rankings.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Fear of pain and fear of falling among younger and older adults with musculoskeletal pain conditions.

BACKGROUND: The fear-avoidance model of pain accounts for the debilitating consequences of strong fear as a component of reactions to painful conditions (eg, movements become anxiety-provoking because they cause pain). The model, which is supported in the literature, posits that fear of pain interferes with recovery because it leads to avoidance of beneficial activity. Despite the high prevalence of pain among the elderly, investigations of fear of pain in this population are scarce. A related construct, fear of falling, has been studied among elderly (but not younger) adults as an age-specific concern. OBJECTIVES: To examine the relationship between fear of pain and fear of falling. Specifically, it is hypothesized that fear of pain and fear of falling are distinct constructs. Moreover, the authors investigated whether fear of falling becomes more relevant with increasing age in a sample of seniors and younger adults with musculoskeletal conditions. METHODS: A convenience sample of younger and older adult physiotherapy outpatients (n=226) receiving treatment for musculoskeletal conditions were recruited for the study. Fear of pain and fear of falling were assessed using self-report measures. RESULTS: There were no age differences with respect to fear of pain and fear of falling. Regression analyses showed that fear of pain measures contribute substantial unique variance to the prediction of each other; however, they only make minor unique contributions to the prediction of fear of falling. Similar results were obtained through confirmatory analyses using structural modelling techniques. CONCLUSIONS: The analyses supported the distinctiveness of fear of pain and fear of falling. Moreover, among physiotherapy outpatients with musculoskeletal pain conditions, fear of falling and fear of pain are distinct constructs that appear to represent the concerns of both seniors and younger pain patients.

Accidental Falls↗
PubMed2004

A developmental analysis of self-reported fears in late childhood through mid-adolescence: social-evaluative fears on the rise?

BACKGROUND: The frequently reported decline in the overall frequency and intensity of fears during late childhood and adolescence may mask different developmental patterns for two broad subclasses of fears: fears concerning physical danger and fears concerning social evaluation. It was investigated if physical fears decrease between late childhood and mid-adolescence, while social-evaluative fears increase during this period. It was also studied if changes in both sets of fears are more strongly related to socio-cognitive maturity than to age, which itself is only a proxy measure of maturity. METHODS: A non-clinical sample of 882 children and adolescents (ages 8-18) was recruited for study. Fears were assessed using the Ollendick Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R). A Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was conducted to study the factor structure of the Failure and Criticism subscale of the FSSC-R. Level of development was assessed using the Sentence Completion Test for Youth (SCT-Y), a measure of socio-cognitive maturity that is based on Loevinger's model, and measure, of ego development. RESULTS: The PCA of the Failure and Criticism subscale revealed three factors: Social Evaluation, Achievement Evaluation, and Punishment. As predicted, the significant decrease of overall fearfulness obscured two contradictory developmental patterns: (a) fears of physical danger and punishment decreased with age, whereas (b) fears of social and achievement evaluation increased with age. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the age effect for social-evaluative fears was explained entirely on the basis of developmental differences in socio-cognitive maturity (controlling for verbal ability). In contrast, age was a better predictor of the decrease of physical and punishment fears (although socio-cognitive maturity still added to the predictive value of age). CONCLUSION: The expression of social evaluation fears during adolescence appears not atypical and might be a corollary of socio-cognitive maturation. At the same time, the natural presence of those fears during adolescence appears to constitute a vulnerability for developing a social anxiety disorder.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The fear of fear concept: evidence in favour of multidimensionality.

In recent years, questions have been raised regarding the dimensionality of existing measures of fear of fear. This is an important issue that needs to be addressed if the dimension(s) of any scale purporting to assess fear of fear are to guide theory and research. One of the most widely used measures of fear of fear comprises a set of two scales: the Agoraphobic Cognitions Questionnaire (ACQ) and the Body Sensations Questionnaire (BSQ). In the present study, the dimensional nature of both measures was empirically examined using a confirmatory approach. It was also determined whether the dimensions are differentially related to a variety of state and trait measures of psychological functioning. The results pointed to multi- rather than unidimensionality of the fear of fear construct. Correlational and scale-level confirmatory analyses across time-points indicated that (a) fear of fear dimensions are elements of a replicable higher order Negative Affect/Neuroticism/General Emotionality/Instability component; (b) this superfactor emerges orthogonal to the stable higher order factors of Positive Affect, Phobic Fear (excluding Agoraphobic Fears), and Agoraphobia; and (c) anxiety and fear are distinct phenomena. Implications for the conceptualization and measurement of fear of fear are briefly discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Nicotine enhances trace cued fear conditioning but not delay cued fear conditioning in C57BL/6 mice.

Nicotine facilitates hippocampus-dependent contextual but not hippocampus-independent cued delay fear conditioning. To test if the effects of nicotine are specific to contextual fear conditioning or would extend to another hippocampus-dependent version of fear conditioning, we compared the effects of nicotine on cued delay and cued trace fear conditioning in male and female C57BL/6 mice. Unlike cued delay fear conditioning, cued trace fear conditioning is hippocampus dependent. Thus, if nicotine enhances hippocampus-dependent fear conditioning, nicotine should enhance trace fear conditioning. For both trace and delay conditioning, five 30 s, 85 dB white noise conditioned stimuli (CS) were paired with five 2 s, 0.5 mA footshock unconditioned stimuli (US). In the trace paradigm, a 30-s period was inserted between CS offset and US onset. The CS and US co-terminated in the delay paradigm. Testing occurred 24 h later. The data indicate that nicotine (given on training and testing day) enhances trace but not delay cued fear conditioning. No sex differences were found. For delay cued fear conditioning a high level of freezing to the CS was found. Thus, a second experiment examined if the lack of enhancement of delay cued fear conditioning by nicotine was due to a ceiling effect. The CS duration was decreased to 15 s and only one CS-US pairing was used for delay and trace cued fear conditioning. Although overall levels of freezing to the cue were lower in the second experiment, nicotine still enhanced trace fear conditioning but did not enhance delay fear conditioning. Taken together, the results of the present experiments suggest that nicotine enhances hippocampus-dependent versions of fear conditioning.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1996

What's the fear of? Using implosion to explore the bodily-injury fear complex.

The present study utilized implosive therapy scenes to assess fear reactions to cues hypothesized to be instrumental in the development and maintenance of bodily-injury phobia. In addition to a bodily mutilation stimulus, the cue areas targeted were loss of control and death fears. Twenty-six high-fear subjects and 24 low-fear subjects rated their fear while imagining that they were the woman depicted in four audiotaped scenes. A repeated measures analysis of variance detected significant group differences for the fear ratings, with the high-fear group reporting more fear than the low-fear group. Also, the high-fear group's skin conductance response amplitudes averaged across the four scenes were significantly higher than those of the low-fear group. Finally, the high-fear group's more pathological questionnaire scores were significantly different from the low-fear group's for both the Self-Control Schedule and the Lester Attitude Toward Death Scale. This study is the first to assess various components of bodily injury fear through the use of imagery while measuring across two response-modes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Distinct contributions of median raphe nucleus to contextual fear conditioning and fear-potentiated startle.

Ascending 5-HT projections from the median raphe nucleus (MRN), probably to the hippocampus, are implicated in the acquisition of contextual fear (background stimuli), as assessed by freezing behavior. Foreground cues like light, used as a conditioned stimulus (CS) in classical fear conditioning, also cause freezing through thalamic transmission to the amygdala. As the MRN projects to the hippocampus and amygdala, the role of this raphe nucleus in fear conditioning to explicit cues remains to be explained. Here we analyzed the behavior of rats with MRN electrolytic lesions in a contextual conditioning situation and in a fear-potentiated startle procedure. The animals received MRN electrolytic lesions either before or on the day after two consecutive training sessions in which they were submitted to 10 conditioning trials, each in an experimental chamber (same context) where they received foot-shocks (0.6 mA, 1 sec) paired to a 4-sec light CS. Seven to ten days later, the animals were submitted to testing sessions for assessing conditioned fear when they were placed for five shocks, and the duration of contextual freezing was recorded. The animals were then submitted to a fear-potentiated startle in response to a 4-sec light-CS, followed by white noise (100 dB, 50 ms). Control rats (sham) tested in the same context showed more freezing than did rats with pre- or post-training MRN lesions. Startle was clearly potentiated in the presence of light-CS in the sham-lesioned animals. Whereas pre-training lesions reduced both freezing and fear-potentiated startle, the post-training lesions reduced only freezing to context, without changing the fear-potentiated startle. In a second experiment, neurotoxic lesions of the MRN with local injections of N-methyl-D-aspartate or the activation of 5-HT1A somatodendritic auto-receptors of the MRN by microinjections of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist 8-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino)tetralin (8-OH-DPAT) before the training sessions also reduced the amount of freezing and the fear-potentiated startle. Freezing is a prominent response of contextual fear conditioning, but does not seem to be crucial for the enhancement of the startle reflex by explicit aversive cues. As fear-potentiated startle may be produced in post-training lesioned rats that are unable to freeze to fear contextual stimuli, dissociable systems seem to be recruited in each condition. Thus, contextual fear and fear-potentiated startle are conveyed by distinct 5-HT-mediated circuits of the MRN.

8-Hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino)tetralin↗