Elsevier

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Volume 14, Issue 3, May–June 2000, Pages 219-238
Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Emotional Processing in Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Comparison with Traumatized and Normal Controls

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0887-6185(99)00035-3Get rights and content

Abstract

Emotional numbing (EN) symptoms are an important but poorly understood component of the response to trauma. To try to demonstrate EN, this laboratory study examined subjective and psychophysiological emotion responses to standardized visual stimuli in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), combat veterans without PTSD, and nontraumatized controls. PTSD subjects showed no evidence of generalized reduction in subjective or psychophysiological emotion responses. In response to a subset of more evocative stimuli, PTSD subjects reported less experience of Positive Emotions, and more experience of Negative Emotions than controls. For controls, valence and arousal were uncorrelated, while they were negatively correlated for PTSD subjects. Verbal and nonverbal subjective emotion measures were positively correlated for all subject groups, but there was little correlation between subjective emotion measures and psychophysiological indices. Viewing time was positively correlated with Positive Emotions for PTSD subjects, and with Negative Emotions for combat controls.

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Subjects

Three groups of subjects participated in this study: Vietnam veterans n = 17 with combat-related PTSD and two control groups with no history of PTSD symptoms. One group of controls had combat experience (combat controls [CC]; n = 11), while the other group was of comparable age and gender but without combat exposure (normal controls [NC]; n = 14; Table 1). We recruited subjects using advertisements in veterans' magazines and newspapers, and posters placed around the medical center and in other

Valence and Arousal

The dimensional (Valence vs. Arousal) scores of emotional responses to all slides differed significantly, with Valence M = 54.58, SD = 6.83 endorsed more than Arousal M = 34.02, SD = 15.55 across all diagnostic groups. Two-way ANOVA (Emotion Dimension × Diagnosis) had a significant effect of emotion dimension, F1, 39 = 49.93, p < .001. This is consistent with the findings reported in earlier research using similar experimental paradigms Lang et al. 1993, Reisenzein 1994 in nonclinical subjects,

Discussion

In this first laboratory study that compares emotion responses of subjects with PTSD to control groups both with and without combat experience, all three subject groups reported similar levels of emotional responses across a general set of visual stimuli. This was true for measures of subjective valence and arousal, specific emotions, and visceral and expressive physiological responses. It appeared that the standardized visual stimuli did elicit valid emotional responses from subjects. However,

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