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

The relation between spider fear in children and cognitive processing bias toward threatening information was examined, 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 stony in adults (Kindt & Brosschot, 1997), a strong relation between spider phobia and bins toward threat words and pictures was found. Several explanations are given to account for this divergence.