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FEAR-PATHOLOGY ETIOLOGY: FEAR REACTIVITY, FEAR RECOVERY, AND REGULATORY RESOURCES

Nylocks, Karin Maria
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1582126029109518

Abstract Details

2020, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences.
Fear-based psychological disorders such as social anxiety disorder (SAD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and specific phobias, are among the most prevalent and costly mental health problems today. Despite the prevalence of these disorders, their etiology is not yet clearly defined. It remains elusive why some individuals develop fear-pathology while others do not. A primary challenge facing research on the etiology of fear-pathology is parsing out if increased generation of fear in response to threat (greater fear reactivity), or poor recovery (decreased fear inhibition), is more predictive of disease. Part of this challenge is also understanding of the association between fear reactivity and fear inhibition. A secondary challenge is reaching a better understanding how regulatory resources might influence fear reactivity and/or fear inhibition. The current study was designed to explore these two challenges in order to reach a better understanding of fear-pathology development. Data was collected from n=101 college students during one laboratory session. Participants were asked to complete a fear reactivity task consisting of two film clips to elicit fear, each followed by a recovery period (without stimuli presentation), as well as two positive emotion videos. This task was specifically designed to examine fear reactivity within the context of threat (during the fear videos) and fear inhibition immediately following fear elicitation (during the recovery periods). During the entire task, emotional responses were measured in real-time on multiple response dimensions including, coded emotional facial expressions, sympathetic arousal (autonomic activity), and self-reported emotional experience. During the laboratory session, participants also completed questionnaires to index psychological symptoms and threat sensitivity, as well as two computerized Stroop tasks to index executive cognitive functioning. The current study aimed to model trajectories in fear responding (indexed by skin conductance) by using latent growth mixture modeling (LGMM), and derive latent groups characterized by their pattern of fear responding. We also aimed to examine latent groups for differences in psychological symptoms, reported threat sensitivity, and regulatory resources (Stroop task performance and positive emotion expression). Lastly, we examined the association between fear reactivity and fear recovery (utilizing change scores) for the full sample. Results from the current study indicate that meaningful individual differences in fear responding are likely to emerge in response to removal of a novel threat, where fear inhibition is expected. Further, our findings suggest a link between psychological risk (reported threat sensitivity) and decreased habituation to a familiar threat, which is moderated by executive cognitive functioning (indexed by Stroop reaction time in the current study). Indeed, our data suggest that increased executive functioning might serve as a regulatory resource within the context of fear. These findings have important clinical implications by adding to existing literature on fear-pathology. Indeed, our findings support current models of fear-pathology, and add to the literature on how executive cognitive resources can influence threat responding.
Karin Coifman (Committee Chair)
115 p.
Psychology
Fear-based psychological disorders, fear reactivity, fear inhibition, psychophysiology, skin conductance

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Nylocks, K. M. (2020). FEAR-PATHOLOGY ETIOLOGY: FEAR REACTIVITY, FEAR RECOVERY, AND REGULATORY RESOURCES [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1582126029109518

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Nylocks, Karin. FEAR-PATHOLOGY ETIOLOGY: FEAR REACTIVITY, FEAR RECOVERY, AND REGULATORY RESOURCES. 2020. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1582126029109518.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Nylocks, Karin. "FEAR-PATHOLOGY ETIOLOGY: FEAR REACTIVITY, FEAR RECOVERY, AND REGULATORY RESOURCES." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1582126029109518

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.