Table 3.

Behavioral studies of fear processing in PTSD

First Author, Year	Sample		Paradigm	Measure	Results
El Khoury-Malhame et al. [54•], 2011	PTSD (n=19)	Control (n=19)	Target Detectio Emotional Stroop task	Reaction time	In both tasks PTSD exhibited attentional bias toward emotional negative stimuli
Fani et al. [60•], 2012	PTSD (n=25)	Trauma-Exposed (n=39)	Dot Probe Fear-Potentiated Startle (CS+, CS−, NA)	Reaction time Startle Response	Participants with PTSD demonstrated attentional bias toward threat and exaggerated startle response
Fleurkens et al. [52], 2011	PTSD (n=14)	Control (n=24)	Emotional Strop task	Reaction time	PTSD exhibited an attentional bias towards threating sexual violence words
Mueller-Pfeiffer et al. [53], 2010	PTSD (n=14)	Trauma Exposed (n=12) Non-Trauma Exposed (n=19)	Emotional Strop task	Reaction time	PTSD group where significant slower in the presence of negative images compare to the other groups
Felmingham et al. [62•], 2011	PTSD (n=11)	Trauma Exposed (n=10)	Trauma-relevant words vs. neutral words	Eye Tracking, Eye Fixation, Pupil Dilation	PTSD had greater number of initial fixations to trauma words
Lee & Lee [63], 2012	Females PTSD (n =14)	Females Trauma Exposed (n=14) Females Control (n=15)	Violent, dysphonic, happy, and natural images	Eye fixations as an index of attentional vigilance	Both PTSD and trauma-exposed allocated more time to the dysphoric images than non-exposed controls
Kleim et al. [56], 2012	PTSD (n=22) (3–12 month after the accident) ASD (n=36) (2 weeks after the trauma	No PTSD (n=77) (3–12 month after the accident) No ASD (n=185) (2 weeks after the trauma)	Blurred Picture identification task (Pictures were trauma related, general threat related, or neutral)	Pictures recognition	Both PTSD and ASD patients identified trauma related pictures better than neutral pictures