Olatunji (psychology, Vanderbilt U.) and McKay (psychology, Fordham U.) fully examine important theoretical and methodological developments on the relationship between disgust and phobic and normal behavior patterns, also providing a general psychometric overview and operational definition while describing cognitive approaches. Amongst other topics, they cover response patterns in development and learning, the acquisition and maintenance of disgust in developmental and learning perspectives, cross-cultural perspective, motivation and autonomic support, and neural functions. They also describe the role of disgust in specific phobias such as blood and injury phobias, food- related disorders, fears of sex and sexual dysfunction, and emerging areas of treatment and research. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)