Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University.
Psychol Sci. 2021 Apr;32(4):587-597. doi: 10.1177/0956797620972491. Epub 2021 Mar 11.
Negative thoughts about future events are a central aspect of anxiety disorders. It is important to gain a deeper understanding of how these imagined events are retained over time when considering the impact of negative future thoughts on anxiety. Prior research indicates that emotional intensity fades faster for negative than positive memories in healthy individuals. This so-called fading-affect bias could extend to recall of imagined future events. Furthermore, several studies have suggested that this bias may be reversed in individuals with high levels of anxiety. In the current study, we examined whether individuals with high anxiety ( = 23), relative to individuals with low anxiety ( = 30), showed faster decay for positive than negative future-event simulations. The results show that emotion facilitated cued recall for imagined future events in the low-anxiety group but not in the high-anxiety group. In addition, individuals with high anxiety showed decreased episodic specificity during recall across all emotional conditions.
对未来事件的消极想法是焦虑症的一个核心方面。当考虑消极未来想法对焦虑的影响时，了解这些想象中的事件是如何随着时间的推移而保留下来的，这一点很重要。先前的研究表明，在健康个体中，与积极记忆相比，消极记忆的情绪强度消退得更快。这种所谓的消退影响偏差可能会扩展到对想象中的未来事件的回忆。此外，几项研究表明，这种偏差在焦虑水平较高的个体中可能会逆转。在本研究中，我们考察了高焦虑个体（n=23）相对于低焦虑个体（n=30）是否表现出对积极未来事件模拟的衰减速度快于消极未来事件模拟。结果表明，在低焦虑组中，情绪促进了对想象中的未来事件的线索回忆，但在高焦虑组中则没有。此外，在所有情绪条件下，高焦虑个体在回忆过程中的情节特异性都降低了。
