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True and False Memories in Social Anxiety Disorder: Effects of Speech Anticipation and Social Content

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Abstract

Cognitive paradigms allow clinical psychologists to examine memory processes, such as false memory production, to better understand psychopathology. The current study uses the Deese–Roediger–McDermott task to investigate true and false memories in a sample with social anxiety disorder (n = 37) compared to a non-anxious control group (n = 40) before and after a three-day delay following list presentation. Additionally, the study examines anticipation of a social stressor and stimuli content (social versus nonsocial) as moderators of memory effects. Contrary to hypotheses, results for true memories showed no effects involving social anxiety or stressor group. However, nonsocial false memories were reported more frequently when participants with social anxiety disorder were anticipating a speech and when control participants were not (the latter at the level of a trend). Notably, when lists were socially relevant, these group differences in false memory disappeared. Results suggest that individuals with social anxiety disorder may be vulnerable to some unexpected memory distortions when anticipating social stress.

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Notes

  1. Power analyses based on Wenzel et al. (2004) for the main group interaction effects, and Storbeck and Clore (2005) for the follow-up tests, indicate 80–90 % power with N = 80. Full details are available from the first author.

  2. The following kinds of words were excluded from the lists: 1) words that were extremely emotionally salient (e.g., “rape” for the date list), 2) words that were associates of non-social or non-outdoor homonyms (e.g., “calendar” for the date list), and 3) words that were very similar to a previously presented word (e.g., “celebration” and “celebrate” on the party list). In addition, words that had already been used as a stronger associate to a different list were excluded so that no words overlapped across lists.

  3. This study was part of a larger study examining information processing in social anxiety. For a full list of measures, please contact the first author.

  4. Inclusion instructions were used so that task demands would not exclude activated items that had been correctly identified as not on the lists. Checked lures indicate that the concept was activated, although the subjective sense of remembering did not occur. Unchecked lures reflect actual false memories.

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Acknowledgments

This project was conducted at the University of Virginia and facilitated by an R01AG033033 grant from the National Institute of Aging to Bethany Teachman. The authors would like to thank the Program for Anxiety, Cognition, and Treatment (PACT) lab, especially Deidra Childress, Katherine Fishbein, Melissa Gasser, Rachel Lazarus, Michelle Pasciuti, Elizabeth Stevens, and Alexandra Werntz for their valuable research assistance. In addition, thanks to Gerald Clore and Chad Dodson for their significant contributions to the design of this project and interpretation of results, and to Janet P. Trammell for her assistance with the methodology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Mercer University School of Medicine, 655 First Street, Macon, GA, 31201, USA

    Meghan W. Cody

  2. New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Shari A. Steinman

  3. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Bethany A. Teachman

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  1. Meghan W. Cody
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  2. Shari A. Steinman
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Correspondence to Meghan W. Cody.

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Conflict of Interest

Meghan Cody, Shari Steinman, and Bethany Teachman declare that they have no conflict of interest relevant to the current study.

Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.

Animal Rights

No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 2.

Table 2 DRM word lists and critical lures (underlined)
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Cody, M.W., Steinman, S.A. & Teachman, B.A. True and False Memories in Social Anxiety Disorder: Effects of Speech Anticipation and Social Content. Cogn Ther Res 39, 797–807 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9712-6

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