Relation of autonomic perception and its manipulation to the maintenance and reduction of fear

68 male and female undergraduates who indicated "much fear, very much fear, or terror" on the public-speaking item of the Fear Survey Schedule were assigned to 1 of 3 groups according to their scores on the Autonomic Perception Questionnaire (APQ). In each group, Ss prepared and presented 2 consecutive speeches under 1 of 3 attentional instruction conditions: (a) instructions to focus on autonomic events that may occur during the speeches, (b) instructions to focus on environmental stimuli during the speeches, or (c) no attention-focusing instructions. Ss given instructions to focus on environmental cues showed a more rapid decline in self-reported fear than did Ss in the other 2 conditions. High-APQ Ss displayed the lowest resting levels of heart rate and skin conductance but the greatest increase in conductance during the preparation period. Low-APQ Ss showed moderate resting activity and the smallest increments in conductance, whereas medium-APQ Ss displayed the highest resting levels and only moderate conductance increases during preparation. The APQ dimension interacted with instructions to determine degree of heart rate reduction over the 2 speeches, whereas within the high-APQ S sample the 3 instruction conditions led to different within- and across-speech patterns of heart rate habituation. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).