Cognitive processes in social anxiety: The effects of self-focus, rumination and anticipatory processing

TMB Mellings, LE Alden - Behaviour research and therapy, 2000 - Elsevier
TMB Mellings, LE Alden
Behaviour research and therapy, 2000Elsevier
We examined three cognitive processes hypothesized to contribute to biases in judgments
about and memory for social events: self-focused attention, post-event rumination, and
anticipatory processing. Socially anxious (N= 58) and nonanxious (N= 58) subjects
participated in a social interaction and then completed measures of self-focused attention
and anxiety-related physiological sensations and behavior. The next day, subjects
completed measures that assessed frequency of post-event processing and recall of the …
We examined three cognitive processes hypothesized to contribute to biases in judgments about and memory for social events: self-focused attention, post-event rumination, and anticipatory processing. Socially anxious (N=58) and nonanxious (N=58) subjects participated in a social interaction and then completed measures of self-focused attention and anxiety-related physiological sensations and behavior. The next day, subjects completed measures that assessed frequency of post-event processing and recall of the interaction. The results indicated that selective attention to negative self-related information led to biases in social judgments and recollections and that post-event processing contributed to the recall of negative self-related information. No evidence was found for selective retrieval of negative self-related information prior to a second social interaction. The results reconcile inconsistent previous findings related to memory bias in social anxiety.
Elsevier