Lecture 2 - Anxiety Flashcards

1
Q

What is the definition of anxiety?

A

A basic emotion, response to danger, has subsystems: cognitive and emotional components
- Cognitive = worry and hyper vigilance
- Physiological = ANS
- Personality = trait anxiety and neuroticism
- Psychological disorder = GAD, OCD
Anxiety isn’t always a bad thing - benefits athletes

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2
Q

What is cognitive anxiety?

A

Chain of negative thoughts, worry, overthinking
and apprehension about potential threats or future events.
Cognitive appraisal of situations as threatening, rumination, and catastrophizing.

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3
Q

What is trait anxiety?

A

Personality trait - people with high trait anxiety more likely to suffer with anxiety than others
Stable and enduring predisposition to experience anxiety across various situations.

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4
Q

What did a twin study find about neuroticism?

A

25% variance in neuroticism due to genetic factors

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5
Q

What is state anxiety?

A

Temporary and situation-specific experience of anxiety or emotional distress.
Transient emotional state characterized by feelings of apprehension, tension, worry, and physiological arousal in response to a particular event, situation, or stressor.

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6
Q

What does the Emotional Stroop Task find? - Watts et al. (1986)

A

Emotional, neutral and fear related words
- People with anxiety just as fast as control when naming emotional and neutral words
- People with anxiety paid more attention to fear related words - bias towards fear stimuli

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7
Q

What is the Dot probe task? - (MacLead & Mathews, 1988)

A

Threat and non-threat words
Followed by a dot probe in the same position as one of the words
Trait anxious and anxious patients focus on the threat word

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8
Q

What did Eysenck et al. (1987) find about 2 words with alternative meanings?

A
  • Slay vs sleigh
  • Die vs dye
  • Trait anxious write threatening word
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9
Q

What is the Processing stage theory? (Williams et al., 1998)

A

Anxiety affects automatic processing which leads to this bias seen in the tasks.
Stimulus input -> state effect -> trait effect
BOTTOM UP PROCESS

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10
Q

What does Eysenck (1992) Hypervigilance Theory propose?

A

Trait anxious individuals scan the environment for threat excessively and lock onto it

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11
Q

What did Wells & Matthews (1994) S-REF Theory propose? Metacognitive Model

A

Anxiety is associated with activation of the Cognitive Attentional Syndrome (CAS)
CAS = self focus, worry, monitoring for threat and ironic coping response. Reduce anxiety by anticipating threats (worry) to avoid them or analyse their response (rumination) to improve coping.
BOTTOM UP AND TOP DOWN

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12
Q

What is the link between S-REF model and Trait Anxiety? - Wells & Matthews 1994

A
  • S-REF = Self-Regulatory Executive Function. Cognitive model that explains the development and maintenance of anxiety.
  • Self-Focused Attention: focus their attention on internal bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions, which heightens their self-awareness and contributes to a heightened sense of anxiety.
  • Cognitive Processes: negative automatic thoughts and maladaptive beliefs about the self, the world, and the future.
  • Metacognitive Factors: metacognitive beliefs and strategies that maintain and exacerbate their anxious symptoms.
    Metacognitive beliefs = underlying mechanisms of emotional vulnerability
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13
Q

What are Metacognitve beliefs?

A

Individual’s thoughts, beliefs, or judgments about their own cognitive processes, including their thinking, knowledge, and understanding.
Metacognition involves awareness and monitoring of one’s own cognitive activities, such as planning and attention.

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14
Q

When does anxiety become a disorder?

A
  • Interferes with functioning
  • Is prolonged and excessive
  • Impairs life
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15
Q

What are some DSM-5 anxiety diagnoses?

A

OCD, Trauma, Stress, Separation anxiety, Phobias, GAD, Social anxiety

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16
Q

What is a panic attack?

A

Sudden increase in anxiety, heart rate, sweating and dizziness

17
Q

What is OCD

A
  • Obsessions = intrusive thoughts, images, urges and ego-dystonic (abhorrent) - thoughts such as ‘all family members will die’
  • Compulsion = repetitive and compulsive behaviour, overt or covert reaction - aim is to decrease stress (satisfy the obsession) such as locking the door 4 times
18
Q

What is Acute stress disorder?

A

4 weeks of exposure to trauma
Memory difficulties and increased arousal
Decreases within 4 weeks

19
Q

What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

A

Occurs after trauma
Recurrent memories, flashbacks, avoidance (of memories, thoughts, places)

20
Q

What is Social Anxiety Disorder?

A

Fear of social situations - fear of being subject to scrutiny
Situations are avoided or endured with intense anxiety
Sweating, shaking, blushing
Will avoid getting help and support as this makes them anxious

21
Q

Why doesn’t social anxiety self correct?

A
  • Person has underlying beliefs or assumptions about the social world
  • Negative thoughts
  • Leads to safety behaviours to continue - don’t change
22
Q

What are examples of safety behaviours?

A
  • Rehearse sentences
  • Hide face with hair or hands
23
Q

What are the problems with safety behaviours?

A

They reinforce anxiety
Individual can appear odd or aloof, less likely to have positive feedback in social situations
Can come across withdrawn or unfriendly

24
Q

What is anticipatory processing?

A

A mechanism that maintains anxiety - occurs before entering feared situations, hours or days before, causes difficulty in having an experience that challenges negativity - reinforces negative outcomes

25
Q

What is Post Mortem?

A

A mechanism that maintains anxiety - upon leaving the feared situation, ruminate and analyse performance - reinforces negative inner image even if the interaction was positive

26
Q

What does Wells & Matthews (1994) metacognitive model propose?

A
  • Emotional disorders maintained by activation of coping or self regulation dominated by worry and rumination.
27
Q

What is the definition of worry?

A

Key feature of GAD, a chain of negative thoughts, a future organised process that anticipates danger and develops ways to avoid it. Cognitive avoidance response to perceived threat

28
Q

What is the definition of rumination?

A

Often linked to depression - difficult to control repetitive thoughts concerning personal problems

29
Q

What are the physiological effects of worry and rumination

A
  • Increase blood pressure
  • Increased cortisol levels
  • Prolongs elevation in heart rate
  • Prolongs cardiovascular recovery
  • Delay in recovery from stress