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Cognitive Processing in Phobias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2009

Fraser N. Watts
Fraser N. Watts
Affiliation:
MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge
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Extract

A programme of research is described which investigates the cognitive processing of phobic stimuli. Phobics show good perceptual “pick-up” of phobic words on a version of the Stroop test. However, their encoding appears to be poor, as indexed by recognition memory for phobic stimuli. Consistent with this, cognitive representations of phobic stimuli are poorly elaborated and differentiated. Brief desensitization was found to have stronger effects on perceptual and encoding phenomena than on cognitive representations. Finally, spider phobics were found to have poor recall of phobic words. This contrasts with the opposite phenomenon that has been reported for agrophobics and depressives.

Type
Special Issue: The Cognitive Revolution
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 295 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 1986

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