Article1971

DESENSITIZATION OF PHOBIAS: SOME PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL PROPOSITIONS

Lawrence F. Van Egeren · Ben W. Feather · Peter L. Hein

64 citations0/0 files storedPsychophysiology

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Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes Memory and Neural Mechanisms Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study tested twelve hypotheses derived from psychophysiological theory underlying the systematic desensitization method of reducing phobic anxiety. Subjects with phobias imagined threatening scenes and neutral scenes under relaxed or non‐relaxed conditions while cardiac, respiratory, digital vasomotor, and skin conductance activity was recorded. Seven hypotheses were confirmed for one or more response measures. The results indicated that (a) imagining threatening scenes produces autonomic arousal in direct proportion to degree of subjective threat associated with the scenes, (b) autonomic reactions do not extinguish and countercondition faster to weak stimuli than to strong stimuli, and (c) muscle relaxation has a demonstrable but limited effect on counteracting autonomic fear reactions. Desensitization theory was partially supported.

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References

1963Experimental foundations of clinical psychology 1970A psychophysiological analysis of fear modification using an automated desensitization procedure.1971Learning approaches to therapeutic behavior change 1968Physiological changes accompanying the visualization of fearful and neutral situations.1966Visual imagery, expected roles and extinction as possible factors in reducing fear and avoidance behavior 1968Desensitization and the experimental reduction of threat.1967Systematic desensitization.

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1982How to relax and how not to relax: A re-evaluation of the work of Edmund Jacobson—I 2006Imagery in psychotherapy.1979Psychophysiological responses to the imagination of fearful and neutral situations: The effects of imagery instructions 1974Autonomic nervous system changes associated with a spider phobic reaction.1978Imagery Vividness Affects Habituation Rate

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