Cognitive bias in spider-phobic children: Comparison of a pictorial and a linguistic spider Stroop.

Examined the relation between spider fear in children and cognitive processing bias toward threatening information. It was investigated whether spider fear in children is related to a cognitive bias for threatening pictures and words. Pictorial and linguistic Stroop stimuli were administered to 28 spider phobic and 30 control children aged 8-12. Spider-phobic children showed a moderate bias for threatening words. Surprisingly, no bias was found for spider pictures, while the spider-phobic children judged the pictures as more aversive. Moreover, in a recent similar study in adults (M. Kindt & J. F. Brosschot, see record 1997-43075-016), a strong relation between spider phobia and bias toward threat words and pictures was found. Several explanations are given to account for this divergence.