Behaviour Research and Therapy 42 (2004) 949–970 www.elsevier.com/locate/brat Preattentive bias for snake words in snake phobia? Jenny Wikstro ¨m a, , Lars-Gunnar Lundh b , Joakim Westerlund a , Lennart Ho ¨gman a a Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden b Department of Psychology, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden Received 26 October 2002; received in revised form ; accepted 23 July 2003 Abstract Stroop interference and skin conductance responses (SCRs) for words related to snakes, spiders, flow- ers, and mushrooms were studied in a group of women (n ¼ 40) with snake phobia who were randomised to a stress or no-stress condition. The 21 low-stress snake phobics showed Stroop interference for unmasked (but not for masked) snake words, compared with 21 age- and sex-matched controls. Stroop interference was not significantly different between high-stress and low-stress snake phobics. No support for stronger SCRs for masked snake words was found in snake phobics in a lexical decision task with masked presentations of the same words. The lack of a masked Stroop interference in snake phobics sug- gests a possible difference in cognitive–emotional mechanisms underlying specific phobia vs. other anxiety disorders that deserves further investigation. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Preattentive bias; Emotional Stroop task; Specific phobia; SCR; Masked words 1. Introduction Several lines of research exist concerning preattentive mechanisms involved in anxiety and anxiety disorders. Cognitive approaches in experimental psychopathology have mostly relied on indirect behavioural measures of information-processing as for example reaction time, whereas behaviourally oriented theorists have focused on measures of physiological arousal like skin conductance responses (O ¨ hman, 1997; O ¨ hman & Soares, 1994). This study aimed at combining  Corresponding author. Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Karolinska Institute, Psychology Section, Kar- olinska Hospital, SE-171 76 Stockholm, Sweden; Tel.: +46-8-517 750 740, fax: +46-8-30 72 98. E-mail address: jenny.wikstrom@cns.ki.se (J. Wikstro ¨m). 0005-7967/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2003.07.002