Lecture 3 - Impact of anxiety on memory

Question 1

explain the general features of anxiety (ie not clinical)

Answer 1

verbal rumination about the negative outcomes of future events
physiological symptoms in the form of excessive arousal such as sweating and racing heart

Question 2

characteristics of clinical anxiety

Answer 2

vigilant moniroing of environment for potentially threatening events
active efforts to avoid and reduce impact of those threatening events
misinterpretation of stimuli as being dangerous
retrieval of information that confirms the negative interpretation

Question 3

name 6 clinical anxiety disorders (not quite all clinical but their different presentations will change the cognitive underlying factors)

Answer 3

pure GAD
GAD + depression
panic dis
OCD
PTSD
Social phonia

Question 4

explain panic disorder

Answer 4

characterised by recurrent and unexpected periods of intense fear or discomfort; there is also experience of symptoms like palitations, choking, nausea, fears of dying
persistent concern about having additional attakcs, worry about that attacks

Question 5

explain social phobia

Answer 5

intense unpleasant arousal experienced as a result of being in social situations
can result in feelings of embarassment and humiliation
particular concern over behaviour being scrutinized
suffer from anticipatory anxiety and post-hoc rumination

Question 6

explain OCD

Answer 6

persistent htoughts, impulses or images that are both inappropriate and intrusive. these congitions lead to increased anxiety and distress
obsessions are followed by rituals that are used to reduce anxiety

Question 7

is OCD an anxiety dis?

Answer 7

removed from DSM-V as an anxiety dis
new view - obsessions and compu;sions, rather than anxiety are the key feature
disagreement about classification - high co-morbidity between OCD and other anxiety disorders and they respond to similar treatments

Question 8

explain GAD

Answer 8

experience of excessive and uncontrollable worry about a range of phenomenon
physical symptoms include fatigue and muscle tension

Question 9

explain PTSD

Answer 9

reaction to traumatic event that is expressed in terms of feelings of trepidation, horror, helplessness and fear
post-event efforts to avoid thinking about the event
experience of intrusive memories of the event that are repetitive and can take the form of nightmares and flashbacks
DSM IV - part of the anxety dis
DSM V - trauma and stressor related dis

Question 10

TRAUMA anagram

Answer 10

T raumatic event
R e-experience
A voidance
U nable to function
M onth at least
A rousal

Question 11

studying memory biases in anixety

Answer 11

intrucsive memories = common feature of PTSD
PTSD asspciated with flashbacks, nightmares and unwanted memories of the traumatic event
social phobic individuals recall vividly self-perceived public humiliations
panic disorder patients recall frequently terrifying thoughts of heart attacks because of memories of worst attack is so distressing

Question 12

how bower’s network theory and beck schema theory act as theoretical frameworks to explain memory in anxiety

Answer 12

both theories predict that anxiety will result in enhanced memory for anxiety-relevant material
both theories predict memory bias in anxiety will resemble memory bias in depression but only the content will differ
common feature of the two theoris = hyper accessibility of threatening information
but does the evidence support these assumptions?

Question 13

name and explain five types of memory

Answer 13

episodic memory - stores multi-modal information about past events and spatial and temporal features
prospective memory - future
semantic memory - facts
working memory - temporary store; manipulation of info
autobiographical memory - memory for personally experienced events (specific vs general)

Question 14

working memoery and anxiety

Answer 14

anxiety restricts the capacity of working memory by competing with task relevent processes
meta-analysis by Moran et al 2016 shows that overall poorer working memory is associated with higher self-reported anxiety but there is conflicting evidence in clinical studies

Question 15

neural activation underlying episodic recall

Answer 15

hippocampus - activation can be increased or decreased

amygdala - activation and PTSD (Zlomuzica et al 2014)

Question 16

do individual difference factors impact on memory biases in anixiety disorders

Answer 16

yes the role of rumination

Question 17

problems in examining memory for threat material in anxiety

Answer 17

requirement of tasks that participants either encode or retrieve material that is aversive

Question 18

impact of anxiety on encoding

Answer 18

anxiety may prevent memory bias by preventing material from being sufficiently elaborated at encoding
nature of stimulu - verbal vs non-verbal is important
large reliance on verbal stimuli
stimuli must grab attention

Question 19

nature of retreival task

Answer 19

free recall ve recongition
for all explicit retrieval - requirement of tasi to produce stimuli that is feared
implicit bs explicit recall is therefore important

Question 20

implications for treatment

Answer 20

problem-solving: ineffective if wrong memories are retrieved

nature of retrieval can influence how an anxious person sees the future