Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122.
Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Dec 26;120(52):e2308593120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2308593120. Epub 2023 Dec 20.
Memory is a reconstructive process that can result in events being recalled as more positive or negative than they actually were. While positive recall biases may contribute to well-being, negative recall biases may promote internalizing symptoms, such as social anxiety. Adolescence is characterized by increased salience of peers and peak incidence of social anxiety. Symptoms often wax and wane before becoming more intractable during adulthood. Open questions remain regarding how and when biases for social feedback are expressed and how individual differences in biases may contribute to social anxiety across development. Two studies used a social feedback and cued response task to assess biases about being liked or disliked when retrieving memories vs. making predictions. Findings revealed a robust positivity bias about memories for social feedback, regardless of whether memories were true or false. Moreover, memory bias was associated with social anxiety in a developmentally sensitive way. Among adults (study 1), more severe symptoms of social anxiety were associated with a negativity bias. During the transition from adolescence to adulthood (study 2), age strengthened the positivity bias in those with less severe symptoms and strengthened the negativity bias in those with more severe symptoms. These patterns of bias were isolated to perceived memory retrieval and did not generalize to predictions about social feedback. These results provide initial support for a model by which schemas may infiltrate perceptions of memory for past, but not predictions of future, social events, shaping susceptibility for social anxiety, particularly during the transition into adulthood.
记忆是一个重构的过程，它会导致事件被回忆得比实际情况更积极或更消极。虽然积极的回忆偏差可能有助于幸福感，但消极的回忆偏差可能会促进内化症状，如社交焦虑。青春期的特点是同伴的凸显度增加和社交焦虑的高发期。症状通常在成年后变得更加顽固之前时起时落。关于社交反馈的偏差是如何以及何时表现出来的，以及个体差异如何在整个发展过程中导致社交焦虑，仍然存在一些悬而未决的问题。两项研究使用社交反馈和提示反应任务来评估在回忆记忆与做出预测时对被喜欢或不喜欢的偏差。研究结果显示，无论记忆是真实的还是虚假的，对社交反馈记忆的强烈积极性偏见是存在的。此外，记忆偏差与社交焦虑之间存在发展敏感性的关联。在成年人中（研究 1），更严重的社交焦虑症状与消极性偏见有关。在从青春期到成年期的过渡期间（研究 2），年龄在那些症状较轻的人中增强了积极性偏见，而在那些症状较重的人中增强了消极性偏见。这些偏差模式仅局限于对记忆检索的感知，而不会推广到对未来社交事件的预测。这些结果初步支持了一个模型，即图式可能会渗透到对过去的记忆感知中，但不会渗透到对未来社交事件的预测感知中，从而影响社交焦虑的易感性，尤其是在向成年期过渡期间。
