Shorter communicationComponents of attentional biases in contamination fear: Evidence for difficulty in disengagement
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were recruited from introductory psychology courses at a public university based on scores on the contamination subscale of the Padua Inventory (PI, range 0–40; Burns, Keortge, Formea, & Sternberger, 1996). The clinical mean of the contamination subscale is 14, with an SD of 6 (Burns et al., 1996). To ensure that participants in the CF group had sufficiently elevated CF, participants (n = 23; PI M = 25, SD = 4) were recruited for the study if their PI score was 20 or higher (i.e.,
Sample characteristics
Participants in the control group (n = 28; 57% female) had a mean age of 19.56 (SD = 1.25), 89% were Caucasian. Participants in the CF group (n = 23; 91% female) had a mean age of 19.13 (SD = .87), 70% were Caucasian. There were more females in the CF group relative to the control group (χ2 = 7.4, p = .007). There were no other differences between groups (Fs < 1.9, p > .18).
Data preparation
RT data were cleaned by first removing errors, then removing RTs that were 2.5 standard deviations or more above the
Discussion
Previous evidence of attentional biases in CF is limited to two studies (Foa et al., 1993, Tata et al., 1996). The present study not only demonstrates attentional biases, but suggests that attentional biases in CF are comprised of difficulty disengaging attention from threat. There are two explanations for why CF individuals may display difficulty disengaging attention from threat. First, it may be the case that difficulty in disengagement reflects an impaired ability to remove attention from
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