Anxiety sensitivity and auditory perception of heartbeat.
Behav Res Ther
; 44(12): 1739-56, 2006 Dec.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-16513082
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.
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Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Ansiedade
/
Pulso Arterial
/
Percepção Auditiva
/
Transtorno de Pânico
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2006
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos