The principal aim of the proposed research is to explore the relationship of anxiety to storage, retrieval, and interpretation of information. The effects of anxious mood and physiological arousal on memory and on perception of threat will be studied. The hypotheses to be tested are directed not only at the mechanisms of mood-memory relationships, but also at the apparent involvement of information-processing in the psychopathology of anxiety disorders. Indeed, recall of affective memories and subsequent modification of cognitive representations of threat have been implicated in recent theories of fear and its reduction. Thus, the proposed research is directed at exploring relationships among affect, memory, and perception to understand their mechanisms, especially as they pertain to the psychopathology and treatment of anxiety disorders. A series of five experiments is proposed to address the following issues: Is anxiety-related information more readily remembered in anxiety state than nonanxiety-related information? Does anxious mood provoked by different threats, produce similar effects on memory? How content-specific are mood congruent recall effects? Does state dependent learning occur for anxious mood? Is state dependent learning a necessary mechanism for mood congruent recall? Does elevated autonomic arousal underlie mood/memory effects? Can negative response bias be excluded as a mechanism for mood/memory effects? That is, does anxious mood produce better memory for anxiety-relevant information, or just produce a bias to report such material? Does arousal influence the interpretation of information (e.g., enhance perception of threat)? Do anxiety disordered individuals evaluate threatening events as more probable and more aversive than do normals? Are they more susceptible to effects of arousal? Three experiments will examine the effects of induced states of anxiety, elation and depression on recall of words related to these moods. The remaining two experiments will explore the effects of physiological arousal on memory and on the estimated probabilities and subjective cost of threatening events. The 190 subjects who will participate in this project include agoraphobics, matched normals and student volunteers manifesting speech phobia, high depression, or low depression. In contrast to previous research, convergent physiological and self-report measures will be used to validate mood induction procedures.
| Paradiso, S; Andreasen, N C; O'Leary, D S et al. (1997) Cerebellar size and cognition: correlations with IQ, verbal memory and motor dexterity. Neuropsychiatry Neuropsychol Behav Neurol 10:1-8 |
