Emotional priming by threatening words in panic patients with and without agoraphobia

Background: Due to catastrophic cognitions panic patients are prone to feed -back loops of emotional arousal (cf Clark, 1986) Objective: This tendency should be evident in increased emotional priming by threatening stimuli, i. e, in faster evaluations of negative words following threatening primes, an d slower evaluations of positive words (targets). Methods: Panic patients w ith and without agoraphobia and two control groups (psychology students and psychosomatic patients) read emotionally positive, threatening and neutral primes, and evaluated subsequent positive, negative, or neutral targets as pleasant or unpleasant. The latencies fo these evaluations were recorded. Results: Only panic patients without but not with agoraphobia showed increa sed priming by threatening primes. Conclusions: Agoraphobia may exert a mod ifying effect on emotional priming in panic disorder which needs further in vestigation.