COGNITIVE AVOIDANCE IN PHOBIA

It is suggested that anxious individuals would have a processing bias for threat only in the initial processing stage, whereas in the consec utive stages the more elaborate analysis of the stimulus would be inhi bited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the stage in which the bias changed into avoidance and whether cognitive avoidance of th reat is restricted to information that refers to the anxiety response as opposed to the threatening stimulus. Therefore , 37 spider phobics and 34 controls were administered a negative priming task and a free r ecall task, using threat words and neutral words, both divided into st imulus-related and response-related words. There was ilo indication of cognitive avoidance of the response-related threat words as assessed by the negative priming task Recall findings indicated ail incomplete memory bias in phobics, with a better recall of stimulus-related threa t words instead of a worse recall of response-related threat words. Th is suggests a ''passive cognitive avoidance'' mechanism, which may sti ll impede the processing of response-related information, crucial for the success of exposure therapy.