Phobia-related cognitive bias for pictorial and linguistic stimuli

The purpose of this study was to examine whether anxiety-related cognitive bias for threat is stronger for threatening pictures than for threatening words. Spider-phobic participants (n = 31) and control participants (n = 33) performed a pictorial and linguistic spider Stroop task. Spider-phobic participants showed a marked bias for threat. However, this bias was similar for pictures and for words, although the spider-phobic group evaluated the pictures as being more aversive. The results suggest that automatic processing of threatening information in people with phobias is triggered in an on-off fashion, independent of subjective threat of the stimuli. This lack of distinction in automatic processing of weak and strong predictors of danger may be fundamental to the irrational nature of anxiety disorders.