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There is increasing evidence that spiders are not feared because of harmful outcome expectancies but because of disgust and contamination-relevant outcome expectancies. This study investigated the relative strength of contamination- and harm-relevant UCS expectancies and covariation bias in spider phobia. High (n = 25) and low (n = 24) spider fearful individuals saw a series of slides comprising spiders, pitbulls, maggots, and rabbits. Slides were randomly paired with either a harm-relevant outcome (electrical shock), a contamination-related outcome (drinking of a distasting fluid), or nothing. Spider fearful individuals displayed a contamination-relevant UCS expectancy bias associated with spiders, whereas controls displayed a harm-relevant expectancy bias. There was no evidence for a (differential) postexperimental covariation bias; thus the biased expectancies were not robust against refutation. The present findings add to the evidence that contamination ideation is critically involved in spider phobia. Keywords: Disgust; Expectancy bias; Covariation bias; Phobia

The present study aimed to determine interidentity retrieval of emotionally valenced words in dissociative identity disorder (DID). Twenty-two DID patients participated together with 25 normal controls and 25 controls instructed to simulate DID. Two wordlists A anal B were constructed including neutral, positive anal negative material. List A was shown to one identity, while list B was shown to another identity claiming total amnesia for the words learned by the first identity. The identity claiming amnesia was tested for intrusions from list A words into the recall of words from list Band recognition of the words learned by both identities. Test results indicated no evidence of total interidentity amnesia for emotionally valenced material in DID. It is argued that dissociative amnesia in DID may more adequately be described as a disturbance in meta-memory functioning instead of an actual retrieval inability. Keywords: Dissociative identity disorder; Amnesia; Multiple personality disorder

Previous research indicated that blushing has socially threatening revealing effects in ambiguous situations. To explain blushing phobics' fearful preoccupation with blushing, we tested the hypothesis that blushing fearful individuals overestimate its revealing effects. High (n = 20) and low (n = 20) blushing fearful individuals read vignettes describing prototypical mishaps and ambiguous social events. Participants were prompted in the perspective of the actor, and were asked to indicate their expectations of the observers' judgments (meta-perceptions). Blushing fearful individuals overestimated the probability and the costs of undesirable outcomes. However, this judgmental bias was not inflated by displaying a blush. Thus, the results provide no evidence to support the idea that fear of blushing is fuelled by a biased conception of its communicative effects. Keywords: Blushing; Social phobia; Judgmental bias; Meta-perception

Patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) frequently report episodes of interidentity amnesia, that is amnesia for events experienced by other identities. The goal of the present experiment was to test the implicit transfer of trauma-related information between identities in DID. We hypothesized that whereas declarative information may transfer from one identity to another, the emotional connotation of the memory may be dissociated, especially in the case of negative, trauma-related emotional valence. An evaluative conditioning procedure was combined with an affective priming procedure, both performed by different identities. In the evaluative conditioning procedure, previously neutral stimuli come to refer to a negative or positive connotation. The affective priming procedure was used to test the transfer of this acquired valence to an identity reporting interidentity amnesia. Results indicated activation of stimulus valence in the affective priming task, that is transfer of emotional material between identities. Keywords: Evaluative conditioning; Affective priming; Dissociative Identity Disorder

Pain-related fear has been found to be associated with increased disability and increased pain perception in patients with chronic low back pain. A possible mechanism by which pain-related fear could lead to increased pain perception is heightened attention to somatosensory sensations. In the present study, chronic pain patients reporting either a high or low level of pain related fear and control participants performed an auditory reaction time task, while occasionally non-painful electrical stimuli -- accompanied by threatening instructions -- were given to the arm or back. In the primary task condition, participants had to perform the auditory task while ignoring the electrical stimuli. Next, the task was presented under dual task conditions in which participants had to respond both to tones as well as to detection of electrical stimuli. It was hypothesized that for the primary task, high fearful patients would show greater disruption of performance on the auditory task than low fearful patients and controls when stimuli were presented to the back. For the dual task, slower reaction times for the auditory task, in combination with faster detection of electrical stimuli was expected. The hypotheses were not confirmed but patients scoring high on pain-related fear did show an overall increase in reaction time for all conditions of the primary task, with or without simultaneous stimulation. Regression analyses demonstrated that high pain-related fear was associated with increased reaction time to tones both in patients and healthy controls, and that within patients pain-related fear was a better predictor of reaction time to tones than present pain intensity. The findings may be interpreted as showing that patients with elevated levels of pain-related fear habitually attend to somatic sensations, giving less priority to other attention-demanding tasks. Keywords: Pain-related fear; Chronic low back pain; Primary task paradigm; Attention; Somatosensory stimuli; Hypervigilance