CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 169Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentMemory and Neural Mechanisms

Fearful Imagery in Social Phobia: Generalization, Comorbidity, and Physiological Reactivity

Open access
McTeague, Lisa M., Lang, Peter J., Laplante, Marie-Claude, Cuthbert, Bruce N., Strauss, Cyd C., Bradley, Margaret M.·2009·Biological Psychiatry
DOI 10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.09.023PMC PMC2735121
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Background Social phobia has been characterized as a disorder of exaggerated fear of social threat and heightened sensitivity to imagery of social failure.Methods To assess the physiological basis of this description, social phobia patients (n=75) and demographically matched control participants (n=75) imagined neutral and fearful events while acoustic startle probes were occasionally presented and eye-blink responses (orbicularis occuli) recorded. Changes in heart rate, skin conductance level, and facial expressivity were also indexed. In addition to comparing control participants and social phobia patients, the influences of diagnostic subtype (circumscribed, generalized), comorbid depression, and chronicity were assessed.Results Patients exceeded control participants in startle reflex and autonomic responding during imagery of social threat, whereas the groups evinced commensurate reactivity to contents depicting commonly shared fears (survival threat). Individuals with circumscribed performance phobia were similar to control participants, with the exception of more robust reactions to idiographic, performance fear imagery. In contrast, generalized phobic patients were characterized by longer disorder chronicity and demonstrated heightened sensitivity to a broader range of fear contents. Those with generalized phobia plus comorbid depression showed attenuation of fear-potentiated startle and reported the most protracted social anxiety.Conclusions Subtypes of social phobia can be objectively distinguished in patterns of physiological reactivity. Furthermore, subtypes vary systematically in chronicity and defensive engagement with the shortest disorder duration (circumscribed phobia) associated with the most robust and focal physiological reactivity, followed by broader defensive sensitivity in more chronic generalized phobia, and finally attenuation of the formerly exaggerated fear potentiation in the comorbidly depressed, the most chronic form.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.09.023

Cites

67 of 67 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Social phobics whose fear is limited to performance situations respond defensively like simple phobics, with heightened fear of their own feared stimuli but not of standard ones.

    “Social phobics with circumscribed fear restricted to performance contexts exhibit defensive responses similar to those of simple phobics, in which they show elevated fear of their personal fears but not of standard fears (McTeague et al, 2009).”

    From Phasic vs Sustained Fear in Rats and Humans: Role of the Extended Amygdala in Fear vs Anxiety (2010) · cites this paper as McTeague et al, 2009

    The Results and Discussion (Social Phobia Subtypes; page not provided) show that patients with circumscribed performance phobia had heightened defensive responses to their personal fear imagery, but not to standard social threats. The paper compares them with controls, not with simple phobics, so the stated similarity to simple phobics is not established by our copy. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • People with generalized social phobia show elevated fear not only for their personal fears but also for commonly shared fears.

    “In contrast, individuals with generalized social phobia show a range of elevated fear that extends beyond their personal fears to more generally shared fears (McTeague et al, 2009).”

    From Phasic vs Sustained Fear in Rats and Humans: Role of the Extended Amygdala in Fear vs Anxiety (2010) · cites this paper as McTeague et al, 2009

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [40]Beck AT Steer RA Brown GK Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition 1996 The Psychological Corporation San Antonio, TX

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
McTeague, L. M., Lang, P. J., Laplante, M.-C., Cuthbert, B. N., Strauss, C. C., & Bradley, M. M.
Affiliations
  • University of Florida (US)
  • University of Minnesota (US)
Corresponding author
Lang, Peter J.
ORCID
Venue
Biological Psychiatry
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2009-03
Volume
65
Issue
5
Pages
374-382
ISSN
0006-3223 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.09.023
PMC
PMC2735121
OpenAlex
W2070583390
Cited by
169
References
60
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 12
FWCI
14.78
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Biological Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Institute of Mental Health (P50MH052384, P50MH072850, F31MH069048)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Keywords
social anxiety disorder, fear potentiation, acoustic startle response, autonomic reactivity, skin conductance, heart rate, facial expressivity, generalized social phobia, comorbid depression, fear generalization, survival threat, social anxiety
MeSH terms
Adult, Depression, Fear, Female, Galvanic Skin Response, Heart Rate, Humans, Imagination, Male, Phobic Disorders, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Severity of Illness Index, Reflex, Startle, Case-Control Studies, Age of Onset

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review