Institute of Education, College of Social Sciences, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan; Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, United Kingdom.
Department of Primary Care and Mental Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Behav Res Ther. 2022 Oct;157:104168. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2022.104168. Epub 2022 Jul 31.
Worry, a stream of negative thoughts about the future, is maintained by poor attentional control, and the tendency to attend to negative information (attention bias) and interpret ambiguity negatively (interpretation bias). Memories that integrate negative interpretations (interpretation-memory) may also contribute to worry, but this remains unexplored. We aimed to investigate how these cognitive processes are associated with worry and anxiety cross-sectionally (Phase 1), and then explore which cognitive processes from Phase 1 would predict worry and anxiety during times of high stress, namely prior to examinations (Phase 2), and after the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Phase 3). Worry, anxiety, and cognitive processes were assessed in an undergraduate sample (N = 64). We found that whilst greater benign interpretation bias and benign interpretation-memory bias were associated with lower levels of concurrent worry and anxiety, only interpretation bias explained unique variance in worry and anxiety. No cognitive predictor significantly explained unique variance in prospective worry and anxiety prior to examinations. In relation to anxiety and worry during the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, both benign attention bias and benign interpretation-memory bias predicted decreased worry; only benign attention bias predicted decreased anxiety. Findings suggest that cognitive processes can predict changes in worry and anxiety during future stressful contexts.
担忧是一种对未来的消极思维流，它受到注意力控制能力差和关注负面信息（注意力偏向）以及负面解释模糊性（解释偏向）的倾向的维持。将消极解释整合在一起的记忆（解释记忆）也可能导致担忧，但这一点尚未得到探索。我们的目的是横截面向研究这些认知过程如何与担忧和焦虑相关（第 1 阶段），然后探讨第 1 阶段的哪些认知过程可以预测在高压力时期（即考试前）和 COVID-19 大流行初期（第 3 阶段）的担忧和焦虑。在本科生样本（N=64）中评估了担忧、焦虑和认知过程。我们发现，虽然良性解释偏向和良性解释记忆偏向越大，与同时存在的担忧和焦虑水平越低，但只有解释偏向解释了担忧和焦虑的独特方差。在考试前的压力下，没有认知预测因子能显著解释前瞻性担忧和焦虑的独特方差。关于 COVID-19 大流行期间的焦虑和担忧，良性注意偏向和良性解释记忆偏向都预测了担忧的减少；只有良性注意偏向预测了焦虑的减少。研究结果表明，认知过程可以预测未来压力环境下担忧和焦虑的变化。
