TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2010//
TI  - Psychophysiology of spider phobia in 8- to 12-year old girls
JO  - Biological psychology
A1  - Leutgeb, Verena
A1  - Schäfer, Andreas
A1  - Kochel, Anja
A1  - Scharmüller, W
A1  - Schienle, Anne
SP  - 424
EP  - 431
VL  - 85
IS  - 3
N2  - The present investigation focused on late event-related potentials (ERPs) and electromyographic (EMG) facial activity in response to symptom provocation in 8- to 12 year-old spider phobic girls and compared results to those in non-fearful controls. Fourteen patients and fourteen controls were presented with phobia-relevant, generally fear-inducing, disgust-inducing and affectively neutral pictures in an EEG/EMG session. ERPs were extracted in the time-windows 340-500ms (P300) and 550-770ms (late positive potential, LPP). Relative to controls, phobics showed enhanced amplitudes of P300 and LPP in response to spider pictures. This result is interpreted to reflect motivated attention to emotionally salient stimuli. Moreover, phobics showed enhanced average facial EMG activity of the levator labii and the corrugator supercilii in response to spider pictures, reflecting the negative valence and disgust relevance of spiders. Additionally, spider phobic girls relative to controls showed higher overall disgust proneness and heightened average facial EMG activity in both muscle regions in response to disgust stimuli, possibly revealing a disgust-based origin of spider phobia in children. These aspects should be considered in psychotherapeutic treatment of childhood spider phobia.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0301-0511
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.09.004
ID  - ref1
ER  -