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Modification of Attentional Bias to Social Threat : The Mediating Effects of Working Memory on Anxiety and Emotion Regulation Strategies of Socially Anxious Individuals

Author:
Minnick, Mark Richard
Published:
[University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2015.
Physical Description:
1 electronic document
Additional Creators:
Soto, Jose A.
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Open Access.
Summary:
A significant body of research has identified heightened emotional reactivity and emotion regulation difficulties among individuals suffering from clinically significant social anxiety. The present study focuses on cognitive processes that may underlie difficulties with emotion regulation and emotional experience in a social anxiety-provoking situation. Theories of the cognitive processes influencing anxious experience propose that attentional biases to threat cues are partly responsible for the presence and maintenance of significant anxiety. Research also suggests that such biases are indicative of limited attentional control. Further work suggests that attentional control is supported primarily by individuals' working memory capacity, and thus that greater working memory capacity should allow for not only greater attentional control, but also the ability to more effectively regulate one's emotions. This study attempted to utilize a computerized attention bias modification task to influence emotional experience of socially anxious participants during an evaluated speaking task in order to test a model wherein working memory capacity would mediate the influence of the attention modification task on emotional experience. Emotional experience was measured using subjective indices of emotional experience, physiological indices of sympathetic and parasympathetic reactivity, and self-reported emotion regulation strategy use. Data analyses indicated that the attention modification task did not have its intended effect in reducing the negative emotional experience of participants. As such, the meditation model of working memory in negative emotional experience was not tested. However, post-hoc analyses suggest that working memory capacity both at baseline and in the midst of a social anxiety-provoking situation may be predictive of subjective negative emotional experience.
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Dissertation Note:
M.S. Pennsylvania State University, 2015.
Technical Details:
The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
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