Imaginal extinction without imagery: Dissociating the effects of visual imagery and propositional thought by contrasting participants with aphantasia, simulated aphantasia, and controls.
aphantasia
electrodermal activity
imaginal extinction
mental imagery
skin conductance response
Journal
Psychophysiology
ISSN: 1540-5958
Titre abrégé: Psychophysiology
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 0142657
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
09 2023
09 2023
Historique:
revised:
11
01
2023
received:
16
07
2022
accepted:
25
01
2023
medline:
8
8
2023
pubmed:
11
2
2023
entrez:
10
2
2023
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Imaginal exposure is a standard procedure of cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of anxiety and panic disorders. It is often used when in vivo exposure is not possible, too stressful for patients, or would be too expensive. Peter Lang's Bio-Informational Theory implies that imaginal exposure is effective because of the perceptual proximity of mental imagery to real events, whereas empirical findings suggest that propositional thought of fear stimuli (i.e., thinking about the stimuli without seeing them in the mind's eye) could be sufficient in therapeutical contexts. Exposure to propositional thought, instead of vivid mental imagery, would be more tolerable for patients since vivid imagery is associated with high emotional distress. To investigate whether mental imagery or propositional thought is crucial for the success of imaginal exposure, participants with the rare state of aphantasia (= absence of sensory mental imagery but with intact propositional thought) and two control groups were subjected to a fear conditioning paradigm followed by imaginal exposure and a reinstatement procedure. During imaginal exposure, control group 1 (N = 30) stared at a bright screen to disrupt visual imagery by incoming luminance (= simulated aphantasia), whereas control group 2 (N = 30) and participants with actual aphantasia (N = 30) kept their eyes closed. The results show […].
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e14271Informations de copyright
© 2023 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.
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