Social anxiety and cognitive expectancy of aversive outcome in avoidance conditioning

Fear conditioning studies have shown that social anxiety is associated with enhanced expectancy of aversive outcome. However, the relation between cognitive expectancy and social anxiety has never been tested in avoidance conditioning paradigms. We compared 48 low (LSA) and high socially anxious individuals (HSA) on subjective expectancy of aversive outcome during an avoidance conditioning task. Displays of neutral faces were coupled with an aversive outcome (US): a shout and a shock. Participants could avoid the US by pressing a correct button from a button box. First, HSA showed higher US expectancy than LSA during the initial phase of avoidance conditioning, supporting the view that socially anxious individuals have an expectancy bias when social situations are ambiguous. Second, when the avoidance response became unavailable, LSA showed lower US expectancy than HSA, suggesting that low socially anxious individuals are prone to a positive bias when perceived threat is high. A lack of such positive bias in socially anxious individuals may lead to higher susceptibility to safety behavior interpretations. Together, these findings support the role of cognitive processes in avoidance conditioning and underscore the relevance to encounter avoidance learning when studying social anxiety.     

The level of anxiety in counseling

Pastoral Psychology -     

The effects of language conditioning on various aspects of anxiety

Staats' three-function learning theory provides the basis for investigating the effects of emotionally-relevant self-verbalizations (SV) on the physiological, subjective-affective and behavioural aspects of anxiety. Using aversive electric UCSs and slides of snakes (CS), anxiety was classically conditioned in 88 volunteer Ss. In 20 subsequent language-conditioning trials (without aversive electric UCSs), the same snakes slides were paired with UCS verbalizations having either positive or negative connotative meanings. Half of the Ss were exposed to a living snake prior to language conditioning. The results show a complete extinction of the conditioned anxiety response in groups with positive SV whereas negative SV impeded extinction; the latter effect could only be found in groups without exposure to snakes prior to language conditioning. In general, the affective evaluation of snakes improved in groups with positive SV and deteriorated in groups with negative SV. However, these effects were more pronounced in groups without exposure to snakes. Although the results indicate that Ss in all groups with positive SV exhibited more approach behaviours than Ss with negative SV, this trend was not statistically significant. The possible relevance of the results for a language-conditioning approach to anxiety reduction is briefly discussed.