Anxiety sensitivity and auditory perception of heartbeat

Behaviour Research and Therapy
R A PollockL E Marks

Abstract

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is the fear of sensations associated with autonomic arousal. AS has been associated with the development and maintenance of panic disorder. Given that panic patients often rate cardiac symptoms as the most fear-provoking feature of a panic attack, AS individuals may be especially responsive to cardiac stimuli. Consequently, we developed a signal-in-white-noise detection paradigm to examine the strategies that high and low AS individuals use to detect and discriminate normal and abnormal heartbeat sounds. Compared to low AS individuals, high AS individuals demonstrated a greater propensity to report the presence of normal, but not abnormal, heartbeat sounds. High and low AS individuals did not differ in their ability to perceive normal heartbeat sounds against a background of white noise; however, high AS individuals consistently demonstrated lower ability to discriminate abnormal heartbeats from background noise and between abnormal and normal heartbeats. AS was characterized by an elevated false alarm rate across all tasks. These results suggest that heartbeat sounds may be fear-relevant cues for AS individuals, and may affect their attention and perception in tasks involving threat signals.

References

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Citations

Aug 24, 2011·Emotion·Erika H Siegel, Jeanine K Stefanucci
Dec 7, 2007·Neuropsychopharmacology : Official Publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology·Philip L JohnsonAnantha Shekhar
Aug 19, 2014·Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews·Philip L JohnsonAnantha Shekhar
Feb 24, 2010·Biological Psychology·Nicholas D GiardinoFernando J Martinez
Feb 25, 2014·Anxiety, Stress, and Coping·Joshua J Broman-FulksKelsey J Toomey
Apr 15, 2008·American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part C, Seminars in Medical Genetics·Dina R Hirshfeld-BeckerAude Henin

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