Skin conductance responses as predictor of emotional responses to stressful life events.

Preferential preattentive processing towards threat has been proposed to play a casual role in the development of anxiety, mainly because it reliably predicts emotional responding to stressful events. However, in the investigation of the predictive value of preferential preattentive processing towards threat, the emotional Stroop task has exclusively being used. This study was designed to prospectively investigate the predictive value of skin conductance reactivity in response to masked (i.e., preattentively perceived) threatening pictures on emotional responding following stressful life events. To collect skin conductance data, the picture perception task was administered to 136 police recruits due to enroll into active duty within 2-4 months. To assess psychological distress following emotionally stressful life events, the impact of event scale were administered approximately 24 months later. Controlling for trait anxiety, analyses indicated that enhanced skin conductance reactivity in response to masked threatening pictures (relative to neutrals) was a strong predictor of emotional responding to stressful life events. This finding support preferential preattentive processing towards threat as a relatively independent factor predictive of emotional responding.

[1]  T. Dalgleish,et al.  The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. , 1996, Psychological bulletin.

[2]  Cynthia L. S. Pury,et al.  Information-processing predictors of emotional response to stress , 2002 .

[3]  A. Mathews,et al.  Don't look now: Attentional avoidance of emotionally valenced cues , 2003, Cognition & emotion.

[4]  P. Merikle,et al.  Distinguishing conscious from unconscious perceptual processes. , 1986, Canadian journal of psychology.

[5]  K H Nuechterlein,et al.  Psychophysiological dysfunctions in the developmental course of schizophrenic disorders. , 1984, Schizophrenia bulletin.

[6]  C MacLeod,et al.  Individual differences in the selective processing of threatening information, and emotional responses to a stressful life event. , 1992, Behaviour research and therapy.

[7]  M. Horowitz,et al.  Impact of Event Scale: A Measure of Subjective Stress , 1979, Psychosomatic medicine.

[8]  K. Mogg,et al.  Subliminal processing of emotional information in anxiety and depression. , 1993, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[9]  B. Kelly,et al.  Psychosocial impact of newly diagnosed advanced breast cancer , 2005, Psycho-oncology.

[10]  K. Mogg,et al.  A cognitive-motivational analysis of anxiety. , 1998, Behaviour research and therapy.

[11]  D. Magnusson,et al.  Psychopathology: An interactional perspective. , 1987 .

[12]  S. Mineka,et al.  Fears, phobias, and preparedness: toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. , 2001, Psychological review.

[13]  A. Ohman,et al.  "Unconscious anxiety": phobic responses to masked stimuli. , 1994, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[14]  R. Roberson-Nay,et al.  Attentional bias to threat and emotional response to biological challenge. , 2004, Journal of anxiety disorders.

[15]  A. Mathews,et al.  A Cognitive Model of Selective Processing in Anxiety , 1998, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[16]  C. Spielberger,et al.  Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory , 1970 .

[17]  B. Jansson,et al.  Unconscious Responses to Threatening Pictures: Interactive Effect of Trait Anxiety and Social Desirability on Skin Conductance Responses , 2006, Cognitive behaviour therapy.

[18]  A. Mathews.  On the malleability of emotional encoding. , 2004, Behaviour research and therapy.

[19]  Steven Farmer,et al.  Coping with post‐traumatic stress: young, middle‐aged and elderly comparisons , 2004, International journal of geriatric psychiatry.

[20]  J. Williams.  Cognitive Psychology and Emotional Disorders , 1991 .

[21]  M. Kindt,et al.  Responding to subliminal threat cues is related to trait anxiety and emotional vulnerability: a successful replication of Macleod and Hagan (1992) , 1995, Behaviour research and therapy.

[22]  C. MacLeod,et al.  Selective attention and emotional vulnerability: assessing the causal basis of their association through the experimental manipulation of attentional bias. , 2002, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[23]  P. Lang,et al.  International Affective Picture System (IAPS): Instruction Manual and Affective Ratings (Tech. Rep. No. A-4) , 1999 .