Autobiographical memory biases in social anxiety

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Abstract

Individuals with social anxiety preferentially attend to threatening social information during and following social events. As such, cognitive models predict that social anxiety should be associated with biases in the recall of social events. However, initial experimental studies examining this assumption either failed to find such biases or found only weak evidence for an autobiographical memory bias. The current review examines an emerging line of evidence offering support for the role of an autobiographical memory bias in the development and maintenance of social anxiety. The review begins by examining current theoretical approaches to autobiographical memory before looking at empirical studies that have examined differences between socially anxious and non-anxious individuals in the recall of autobiographical memories. Specific memory biases include properties of social-threat memories, the imagery associated with these memories, and the cognitive processing styles that have been found to either facilitate or inhibit the recall of emotional memories. Limitations in methodologies used to study retrieval of memories and the implications of findings for future research are discussed.

Introduction

Social anxiety disorder is characterized by a marked and persistent fear of social or performance situations that provoke an immediate anxiety response (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Anxiety typically focuses on concerns about negative evaluation from other people. Individuals with social anxiety disorder anticipate that they will embarrass or humiliate themselves before entering a social event, shift their attention towards detailed monitoring and observation of the self during the event, and engage in rumination following the event (Clark & McManus, 2002). Social anxiety is characterized therefore by a number of biases in cognitive processing (see Heinrichs & Hofmann, 2001) that are a direct result of the social context in which anxiety is apprehended and experienced. Given that social anxiety is associated with enhanced attention to perceived threat in social situations, a basic assumption of cognitive models of social anxiety (Clark and Wells, 1995, Rapee and Heimberg, 1997) postulates that individuals will display a tendency to recall negative experiences of social events. As such, it is expected that social anxiety will be associated with biases in the recall of certain types of autobiographical experiences.

In comparison with the wealth of research that has focused on the role of implicit and explicit memory biases in social anxiety (see Coles and Heimberg, 2002, Mitte, 2008), the role of autobiographical memory biases in social anxiety has been relatively under researched. However, there is good reason to believe that such biases play an integral role in the maintenance of this disorder. Clinical observation suggests that individuals with social anxiety disorder tend to be preoccupied with emotionally upsetting social events from the past, particularly in relation to perceived social failures (Clark and Wells, 1995, Coles and Heimberg, 2002). In addition, cognitive models of social anxiety have highlighted the importance that memory processes may play in exacerbating anxiety. For example, Rapee and Heimberg's (1997) cognitive-behavioral model proposes that socially anxious individuals' perception of their social performance is likely to be mediated by prior social experiences that are represented either accurately or inaccurately in long term memory. Furthermore, Clark and Wells' cognitive model argues that recently perceived social failures may be added to an extensive list of past social failures that are stored in memory, together serving to strengthen negative beliefs about social inadequacy and the threat of social situations.

Whereas autobiographical memory biases have been consistently demonstrated in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (Moore and Zoellner, 2007, Williams et al., 2007), research examining whether such biases are apparent in other anxiety disorders has been more equivocal (Burke and Mathews, 1992, Levy and Mineka, 1998, Richards and Whittaker, 1990). Indeed, preliminary research examining memory biases in social anxiety initially failed to find differences between individuals with social anxiety disorder and non-anxious controls in the retrieval of threat-related autobiographical memories (Rapee, McCallum, Melville, Ravenscroft, & Rodney, 1994), despite clinical observation and theoretical models that would argue to the contrary. However, an emerging line of research in this area has begun to highlight new ways of examining autobiographical memory biases. For example, the link between early autobiographical memories and current images of the self (Hackmann et al., 2000, Wild et al., 2008), and the effect of certain cognitive processing styles on the retrieval of autobiographical memories (Morgan and Banerjee, 2008, Stopa and Jenkins, 2007) have together highlighted the role of autobiographical memory in the development and maintenance of social anxiety.

The current review will begin by introducing the concept of autobiographical memory, presenting the view that memories are reconstructed from self-knowledge, with particular reference to Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) self-memory system. Current ways of examining autobiographical memory in social anxiety will then be reviewed (see Table 1), emphasizing the role that specific cognitive processing styles may play in enhancing the accessibility of emotionally adverse memories.

Section snippets

Theories of autobiographical memory

Tulving (1972) made an important distinction between two systems in long term memory: the semantic and episodic memory systems. The former consists of meaningful facts about the world and contextual knowledge, while the latter consists of a record of specific experiences. Autobiographical memory may be viewed as a particular type of episodic memory concerned with “specific experiences and memory for the personal facts of one's life” (Conway, 1990, p.4). Autobiographical memories consist of

Autobiographical memory and anxiety

Autobiographical memory in anxiety disorders has typically been investigated in two ways: 1) studies of overgeneral memory have found that the tendency to recall overgeneral memories coupled with reduced ability to access specific memories is associated with PTSD (McNally et al., 1994, McNally et al., 1995), and 2) studies have examined whether anxiety is associated with a retrieval bias for anxiety-related personal memories. In support of this, Richards and Whittaker (1990) found that

Early autobiographical memories and social anxiety

Development of social anxiety disorder has been associated with a broad range of environmental influences (Bögels, van Oosten, Muris, & Smulders, 2001), individual response factors (Harvey, Ehlers, & Clark, 2005), and genetic factors (Kendler, Karkowski, & Prescott, 1999). In particular, problems with peer group relations have been shown to coincide with the onset of social fears (La Greca & Lopez, 1998). Harvey et al. (2005) found that when recalling social situations prior to the onset of the

Cognitive processing styles and autobiographical memories in social anxiety

The research reviewed thus far suggests that certain types of emotional autobiographical memories may be more accessible to socially anxious individuals. However, it is likely that there are certain circumstances under which these memories are more likely to be recalled and under which such memories exert stronger emotional responses. For example, Magee and Zinbarg (2007) examined how the type of cognitive processing style used in response to emotional social memories could affect levels of

Directions for future research

Research findings reviewed above suggest that high socially anxious individuals do experience enhanced memory for threatening and highly emotional autobiographical material. Furthermore, it appears that memories which are highly representative of current self-perceptions tend to be more accessible to individuals with social anxiety. Several lines of enquiry are important for future research studies in this area. First, researchers should consider the value of further examining whether the

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