UT PSY 394U - Induced processing biases have causal effects on anxiety

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Indu ced processin g biases have causal effectson anxi etyA ndrew MathewsMRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UKColin MacLeodUniversit y of Western Australia, Nedlands, AustraliaAft er briefly de scribing the nature of e motional processing biases associated withvul nerabilit y to anxiety, and a model of how they may be produced, we reviewnew da ta on the experimental induction of attentional and interpretative biases.We show t hat these biases can be readily induced in the laboratory, in the absenceof mood changes. However, induced biases exert effects on the processing of newinfor mation and cause congruent changes i n state anxiety when they influenceho w emotionally significant informat ion is encoded. We can therefore concludethat biases have ca usal effects on vulnerability to anxiety via their influence onho w significant events are processed. Finally, we discuss how our model mightac count for the acquisition of processing bias and for when they ca n influenceanxie ty.T he nature of anxiety-linked processing biasesIn everyday life we commonly encounter events tha t have both negative andposi tive aspects, or are ambiguous in their emotional mea ning. Which aspect weattend to, or how we interpret such ambiguity, is associated with enduringtendencies to expe rience positive or negative emotional states, such as anxiety,as well as current mood (for a review, see Mathews & MacLeod, 1994). T hus,when two or more stimul i or meanings compete for processing resources, peoplewith high levels of trait anxiety—particularly when under stress—are morelikely than ar e others to attend to a negatively valenced or threatening stimulus,COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2002, 16 (3), 331–354Correspondenc e should be addressed to Andrew Mathews, MRC Cognition and Brain SciencesUnit 15, Chaucer Road, Cambridge, CB2 2EF, UK; e-mail: [email protected] , orColin MacLeod, Department of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6907,Aust ralia; e-mail: [email protected] uSeveral of the experiments reported here were carried out by Lynlee Campbell as part of herdoctoral research work. We thank Bundy Mackintosh and Tom Borkovec for helpful theoreticaldiscussions.# 2002 Psychology Press Ltdhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/02699931.html DOI:10.1080/02699930143000518and are more likely to adopt a threatening interpretati on of ambiguousinformation.For e xample, if two words differing in their valence are displayed simulta-neously and are followed by a to-be-detected target, high trait-anxious indivi-dua ls under stress are typically faster to detect targets in the prior location of athreatening word. In low trait anxious individuals this effect is typically absent,or som etimes reversed, eve n under stressful conditions (e.g., MacLeod &Mathews, 1988). Of course, it would not be adaptive for anyone, regardless oftrait anxiety, to ignore all threatening information, because many events requireattention and positive action to avert real danger. Indeed, it seems self-evidentthat our survival depends on responding to major threats to personal safety. Thedistinction between those with high versus l ow trait anxiety thus refers to theirresponsiveness to more minor threat cues that do not signal dangers requiringurge nt action.There are a number of ways in whic h one could try to account for thisdifference in responsiveness. One possibility is t hat there is some kind of threatevaluation process, wit h a threshold that must be exceeded before the cognitivesyst em shifts fro m a mode in which threat cues can be ignored, to one in whichthey are attended. If so, then it could be the threshold l evel at which this shiftoccurs that is associated with vulnerabi lity to anxiety. As indicated earlier, thereis evidence showing that attention to minor threat cues (vigilance) is revealed bystress in high, but not in low trait anxious individuals (MacLe od & Mathews,1988).Di fferences between high and low trait -anxious individuals are not confinedto experiments involving words. Equivalent results have been found using dis-plays of two faces varying in emotional expression (Mogg & Bradley, 1999; butsee Mansell, Clark, Ehlers & Chen, 1999 for discrepant results in social anxiet y)or with other pictures varying in their threatening content (Yiend & Mathews,2001). This last study reported experiments in which single pictures varying inemotional valence were presented in one location, followed by a target in th esame or in another location. This method allows a distinction to be drawnbetween the speeding due to attentional engagement with a picture if the ta rgetappears in the same location, and slowing when participants must disengageattention to find a target elsewhere. Evidence from this last study, and fromother similar research (e .g., Compton, 2000; Fox, Russo, Bowl es & Dutton,2001) strongly suggests that these effects arise because anxiety-proneindividuals have greater di fficulty in disengaging attentional resources fromthreatening information.Related interference effects occur when threatening stimuli must be ignoredin order to perform a task efficiently. For example, in highly anxious indivi-dua ls, search for a neutral target is slowed if it is embedded among threateningdistracters (Mathews, May, Mogg & Eysenck, 1990). Anxious individuals alsoshow gre ater interference when colour-naming threatening words (the emotional332M ATHEWS AND MacLEODStroop effect, see Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996). This effect persistseven when the words are displayed very briefly and are followed by anobsc uring mask to restrict awareness (e.g., MacLeod & Rutherford, 1992; Mogg,Bradley, Williams, & Mathews, 1993). Stroop interference from m asked wordshas also been found in one study to predict later distress following a disturbinglife event (MacLeod & Hagan, 1992). Both faster detection of target s replacingthreatening words, and related interfer ence effects, may thus arise from the samebasic process, initiated outside awareness, in which mil dly threatening stimulicapture attentional resources more readily in high trait anxious individuals.When reading about events that a r e ambiguous in terms of their emotionalimplications, individuals having low scores on measures of trait anxiety aremore likely to arrive at positive interpretations, whereas those wit h high scoresappear to be more even-handed or to favou r more threatening inte rpretations.Thus, a fter hearing the sentence


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