Psychophysiological responsivity to script-driven imagery: an exploratory study of the effects of eye movements on public speaking flashforwards

A principle characteristic of public speaking anxiety relates to intrusive mental images of potential future disasters. Previous research has found that the self-reported emotionality of such “flashforwards” can be reduced by a cognitively demanding, dual-task (e.g., making eye movements) performed whilst holding the mental image in-mind. The outcome measure in these earlier studies was participants’ self-reported emotional intensity of the mental image. The current study (N = 34) explored whether an objective measure of emotionality would yield similar results in students with public speaking anxiety. A script-driven imagery procedure was used to measure psychophysiological responsivity to an audio script depicting a feared (public speaking) scenario before and after an eye movement intervention. Relative to the control condition (imagery only), those who made eye movements whilst holding a mental image of this scenario in-mind demonstrated a significant decrease in heart rate, which acted as a measure of emotionality. These findings add to a previous body of research demonstrating the beneficial qualities of dual-tasks and their potential for treatment of both past and future-oriented anxieties.

Keywords: flashforwards, eye movements, experiment, heart rate, anxiety, dual-task

Citation: Kearns M and Engelhard IM (2015) Psychophysiological responsivity to script-driven imagery: an exploratory study of the effects of eye movements on public speaking flashforwards. Front. Psychiatry 6:115. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00115

Received: 31 October 2014; Accepted: 31 July 2015;
Published: 14 August 2015

Edited by:
Julie Krans, University of Leuven, Belgium

Reviewed by:
David G. Pearson, University of Aberdeen, UK
Franck Salomé, University of Nantes, France

Copyright: © 2015 Kearns and Engelhard. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Iris M. Engelhard, Division of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, PO Box 80140, Utrecht 3584 CS, Netherlands, [email protected]

†Present address: Michelle Kearns, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick, Ireland
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