Abstract
The reported study involved a replication and extension of Peterson and Levis’s (1985) experiment, which assessed bodily injury fears via the Behavioral Avoidance Slide Test (BAST). In the earlier study, a variable-exposure test procedure was used. The primary purpose of the present study was to provide a comparison between variable- and fixed-exposure test procedures. The fixed procedure has the advantage of controlling for test-stimulus exposure time. The study was also designed to assess the usefulness of an additional behavioral measure, that of response force, and to provide an additional assessment of the validity of selecting subjects’ fear levels on the basis of scores on paper-pencil inventories. Both test procedures were found to produce comparable results, but the fixed-exposure procedure is preferred on methodological grounds. The force response showed promise as an additional behavior index but requires further assessment. The utility of the BAST procedure was confirmed by skin-conductance and self-report data to the test stimulus, but the data strongly support the abandonment of selecting subjects’ fear levels on the basis of responses to paper-pencil inventories.
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Levis, D.J., Peterson, D.A. The assessment of bodily injury fears via the behavioral avoidance slide test: A replication and extension. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 28, 19–22 (1990). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337637
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337637