Wenzel Amy, Brendle Jennifer R, Kerr Patrick L, Purath Donna, Ferraro F Richard
Psychopathology Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104, USA.
Cogn Behav Ther. 2007;36(4):220-9. doi: 10.1080/16506070701547414.
Although cognitive theories of anxiety suggest that anxious individuals are characterized by abnormal threat-relevant schemas, few empirical studies have estimated the nature of these cognitive structures using quantitative methods that lend themselves to inferential statistical analysis. In the present study, socially anxious (n = 55) and non-anxious (n = 62) participants completed 3 Q-Sort tasks to assess their knowledge of events that commonly occur in social or evaluative scenarios. Participants either sorted events according to how commonly they personally believe the events occur (i.e. "self" condition), or to how commonly they estimate that most people believe they occur (i.e. "other" condition). Participants' individual Q-Sorts were correlated with mean sorts obtained from a normative sample to obtain an estimate of schema abnormality, with lower correlations representing greater levels of abnormality. Relative to non-anxious participants, socially anxious participants' sorts were less strongly associated with sorts of the normative sample, particularly in the "self" condition, although secondary analyses suggest that some significant results might be explained, in part, by depression and experience with the scenarios. These results provide empirical support for the theoretical notion that threat-relevant self-schemas of anxious individuals are characterized by some degree of abnormality.
尽管焦虑的认知理论表明，焦虑个体的特征是具有与威胁相关的异常图式，但很少有实证研究使用适合进行推断统计分析的定量方法来估计这些认知结构的性质。在本研究中，社交焦虑组（n = 55）和非焦虑组（n = 62）的参与者完成了3项Q分类任务，以评估他们对社交或评价场景中常见事件的了解。参与者要么根据他们个人认为事件发生的频率对事件进行分类（即“自我”条件），要么根据他们估计大多数人认为事件发生的频率进行分类（即“他人”条件）。将参与者的个人Q分类与从规范样本中获得的平均分类进行关联，以获得图式异常的估计值，相关性越低表示异常程度越高。相对于非焦虑参与者，社交焦虑参与者的分类与规范样本的分类之间的关联较弱，特别是在“自我”条件下，尽管二次分析表明，一些显著结果可能部分由抑郁和对场景的体验来解释。这些结果为焦虑个体与威胁相关的自我图式具有一定程度异常这一理论观点提供了实证支持。
