One-session Treatment for Spider Fears

Plain-language summary

Despite the efficacy of exposure and response prevention (ERP) for anxiety and phobias, recent theoretical research on fear extinction via inhibitory learning suggests that cognitive restructuring (CR)--the explicit challenging of maladaptive beliefs (e.g,. overestimation of threat)--may actually attenuate exposure outcomes during an exposure trial. That is, by verbally disputing certain beliefs (e.g., "the spider will jump on me and attack me and I will faint from the anxiety") before an exposure task (e.g., gradually approaching a non-venomous spider), anxious individuals may experience less "surprise" from the non-occurrence of feared outcomes, and consequently experience less inhibitory learning (e.g., learning that spiders are not inherently dangerous). Thus, the investigators aim to empirically test the conventional (yet recently challenged) assumption that cognitive restructuring is a necessary component for psychosocial interventions for phobias. 90 participants recruited from the Psychology Department Participant Pool and the community will participate in this study. All participants will meet DSM-5 criteria for spider phobia. Following consent, participants will complete a pre-test assessment of various aspects of spider phobia. Participants will then receive education about the nature of anxiety/spider phobia and be randomly assigned to one of three 45-min intervention conditions: (a) CR before EXP, (b) EXP before CR, and (c) stress management (a control condition that involves neither CR nor EXP). Following the intervention, participants will complete a 10-minute post-test assessment and be scheduled to return for a follow-up assessment a month later.

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