Early Maladaptive Schemas as Moderators of the Impact of Stressful Events on Anxiety and Depression in University Students

The aim of this study was to test the effects of early maladaptive schemas (EMS) derived from the Schema Therapy model (Young 1999) according to the diathesis-stress paradigm. We expected that EMS would make students more vulnerable to symptoms of depression and anxiety in the presence of stressful events and that the effects of these schemas would be different for each symptom. In particular, it was hypothesised that abandonment, emotional deprivation, defectiveness, and failure schemas would interact with stressful events to predict depressive symptoms, whereas abandonment, vulnerability to harm, and dependence schemas were expected to moderate anxiety symptoms. Due to gender differences in EMS and depressive and anxiety symptoms, we also expected that sex would act as a moderator of the relationships between EMS and symptoms. A two-wave prospective study showed that the presence of EMS constitutes a vulnerability factor for both, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and this effect was also moderated by sex. Moreover, the EMS’s content specificity revealed which schemas were more relevant to each symptom, providing valuable information for prevention and intervention programmes.     

Does anxiety affect children's reports of memory for a stressful event?

The study was conducted to explore the effects of anxiety on children's memory for a naturalistic, potentially stressful event. Eighty children of two age groups, 4-5 and 7-8 years, visited the dentist for either a teeth-cleaning check-up or an operative procedure. Anxiety was assessed by a behavioural rating scale, as well as through Likert-scale ratings by the hygienist, parent, and child. Memory for the event was elicited through free recall and specific central and peripheral questions. High anxiety had a debilitative effect on the reports of the older children, but not on young children's reports. However, experience with the dental event mediated the influence of age and anxiety on memory. Although all measures of anxiety were significantly associated with each other, only the behavioural rating scale yielded statistically reliable effects of anxiety on memory. The anxiety-memory relationship is believed to be more complex than previous research with children suggests.     

Remembrance of Eyewitness Testimony: Effects of Emotional Content,Self‐Relevance,and Emotional Tone1

This experiment concerned the effects of emotional content, self‐relevance, and emotional tone of testimony on memory. Eyewitness accounts of 4 events were constructed that systematically differed in emotionality and self‐relevance. The testimony, captured on videotape, was expressed with or without negative emotion. After viewing one of the videotaped accounts, participants were administered cued‐recall and recognition memory tests. Significant main effects indicated that participants best remembered testimony that was emotional in content, self‐relevant, and negatively expressed. Although emotional content and self‐relevance interacted to affect state anxiety, the latter did not mediate memory effects. Overall, significant gender differences in state anxiety but not memory emerged. Implications for understanding the influence of emotion on juror memory are discussed.     

Direct versus indirect tests of memory: Directed forgetting meets the generation effect

Subjects read 20 words and generated 20 others from definitions during a 40-item study phase. Production of each word was followed by an instruction to remember or to forget that word. In free recall, a direct test of memory, words that had been generated were recalled much better than words that had been read. The remember-forget instructional manipulation affected read words but not generated words. In speeded word reading, an indirect test of memory, all studied words showed priming, but read words showed more priming than generated words. Here, the effect of remember versus forget instructions appeared only for generated words. These dissociations of a direct and an indirect test indicate that two powerful encoding manipulations affect separable processes to which these tests are differentially sensitive.     

Memory in posttraumatic stress disorder: properties of voluntary and involuntary, traumatic and nontraumatic autobiographical memories in people with and without posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms

One hundred fifteen undergraduates rated 15 word-cued memories and their 3 most negatively stressful, 3 most positive, and 7 most important events and completed tests of personality and depression. Eighty-nine also recorded involuntary memories online for 1 week. In the first 3-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, comparisons were made of memories of stressful events versus control events and involuntary versus voluntary memories in people high versus low in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. For all participants, stressful memories had more emotional intensity, more frequent voluntary and involuntary retrieval, but not more fragmentation. For all memories, participants with greater PTSD symptom severity showed the same differences. Involuntary memories had more emotional intensity and less centrality to the life story than voluntary memories. Meeting the diagnostic criteria for traumatic events had no effect, but the emotional responses to events did. In 533 undergraduates, correlations among measures were replicated and the Negative Intensity factor of the Affect Intensity Measure correlated with PTSD symptom severity. No special trauma mechanisms were needed to account for the results, which are summarized by the autobiographical memory theory of PTSD.     

Levels-of-processing effects on Chinese character completion: The importance of lexical processing and test cue

The levels of processing (LoP) effect was studied in Chinese character completion tasks. The same stem cue, either graphemically or semantically related to the target character, was used to generate either a perceptual or a conceptual test. Participants received either direct or indirect instructions, so that the same stem cue also produced either an explicit or an implicit test of memory. This allowed us to examine simultaneously the roles of perceptual versus conceptual test and retrieval intentionality in the LoP effect. No LoP effects were found when the memory test was implicit. LoP effects were also not found for stems and characters related graphemically (perceptually), but were found for stems and characters related semantically (conceptually) when the memory test was explicit. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of lexical processing for character completion tests and the importance of reinstatement of the study process during retrieval for explicit memory tests.     

Anxiety-related threat bias in recognition memory: the moderating effect of list composition and semantic-similarity effects

Individuals with high anxiety show bias for threatening information, but it is unclear whether this bias affects memory. Recognition memory studies have shown biases for recognising and rejecting threatening items in anxiety, prompting the need to identify moderating factors of this effect. This study focuses on the role of semantic similarity: the use of many semantically related threatening words could increase familiarity for those items and obscure anxiety-related differences in memory. To test this, two recognition memory experiments varied the proportion of threatening words in lists to manipulate the semantic-similarity effects. When similarity effects were reduced, participants with high trait anxiety were biased to respond “new” to threatening words, whereas when similarity effects were strong there was no effect of anxiety on memory bias. Analysis of the data with the drift diffusion model showed that the bias was due to differences in processing of the threatening stimuli rather than a simple response bias. These data suggest that the semantic similarity of the threatening words significantly affects the presence or absence of anxiety-related threat bias in recognition memory. The results indicate that trait anxiety is associated with a bias to decide that threatening stimuli were not previously studied, but only when semantic-similarity effects are controlled. Implications for theories of anxiety and future studies in this domain are discussed.     

Hypnosis, the timing of its introduction, and acceptance of misleading information

Allocated independent sets of 16 Ss to a crossed 2 (level of susceptibility: high, low) x 2 (information: misleading, nonmisleading) x 2 (state instruction: hypnosis, walking) design to examine the prediction that hypnosis will facilitate memory distortion when hypnotic instruction precedes the exposure of Ss to incorrect, misleading information. E. F. Loftus's recognition procedures were used to focus on the predicted effect. Free recall was also examined for memory distortion effects. Results indicated the presence of significant memory distortion for both recognition and free-recall memories. The distortion effects accompanying hypnosis, however, were not reliably greater than those accompanying waking instruction. Results are examined in relation to the operation of multiple parameters affecting memory distortion in hypnosis. Pertinent factors include the procedures for testing the effects of distortion and the level of Ss' aptitude for hypnosis.     

Go no-go performance under psychosocial stress: beneficial effects of implementation intentions

Acute stress has been found to have negative and implementation intentions (IIs) to have positive effects on cognitive performance. This study was the first to examine the effects of IIs on executive action control under acute psychosocial stress. Forty-two male subjects aged 21-39 years were randomly assigned to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) versus a rest condition. In addition, the instruction to the executive task (a go no-go task) was manipulated (IIs versus standard instruction). After the stress test, a dual-task procedure including a go no-go task was conducted. The TSST resulted in increases in cortisol response, heart rate and state anxiety compared to the rest condition. Acute stress significantly impaired go no-go performance, but only in the group without IIs. We conclude that under acute stress conditions executive functioning is reduced, but the use of IIs can be an effective strategy to overcome this negative effect.     

Viewing oneself during synchronous online learning increases appearance anxiety and decreases memory for lecture content

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, instructors began using online learning platforms to offer live remote instruction (e.g., Zoom), which allow students to view themselves in real-time (i.e., self-view). The present research examined whether having students keep their cameras on, relative to cameras off, during a live online lecture would increase anxiety and reduce learning. In both Experiment 1a (small group setting) and Experiment 1b (large group setting), students in the camera-on condition did not report greater state anxiety, nor was anxiety associated with lower performance on an immediate multiple-choice exam. Experiment 2 specifically examined the effect of self-view and if appearance anxiety (rather than state anxiety) might mediate the relationship between camera use and test performance. Results indicate that participants viewing themselves reported significantly higher appearance anxiety, and that higher appearance anxiety was related to decreased learning. These findings suggest that viewing oneself may uniquely contribute to heightened appearance anxiety and may reduce memory for content when learning synchronously online.     

自我参照对情绪性记忆定向遗忘的影响

关于自我参照效应的研究大多从信息编码角度考察自我参照的加工优势, 但作为记忆过程的另一重要方面, 自我参照对遗忘影响的研究较少。遗忘自身经历的情绪性记忆是日常生活中的常见现象。研究采用项目法定向遗忘范式(item-method directed forgetting)考察了自我参照对情绪性记忆定向遗忘的影响。实验一和实验二的结果都表明参照方式会影响定向遗忘：自我参照条件下的材料会发生定向遗忘; 而他人参照条件下的材料不会发生定向遗忘, 两种参照方式下材料间区辨性的不同是导致这一现象的原因。此外, 实验二采用回忆测试发现：自我参照对不同效价的情绪性记忆定向遗忘产生了不同影响, 而自我提升(self-enhancement)动机在其中起着重要的调节作用。     

Retrieval (Sometimes) Enhances Learning: Performance Pressure Reduces the Benefits of Retrieval Practice

Academic testing has received substantial support as a useful educational activity with robust retention benefits, given that tests can promote retrieval practice. However, testing can also instantiate performance‐related pressure and anxiety that may misappropriate the resources responsible for producing learning benefits. The current project examined the effects of performance pressure on retrieval practice. In two experiments, we instantiated performance pressure with either high‐stakes or low‐stakes quizzes, and assessed memory and comprehension of content on both quizzes and final tests. Quiz performance was equivalent under high‐stakes and low‐stakes conditions, demonstrating that learners adapted to high‐pressure quizzes. However, final test performance was better after low‐stakes versus high‐stakes quizzes, and only low‐stakes quizzes led to a performance advantage over a rereading control group. Participants additionally exhibited some sensitivity to the difficulty of retrieving under pressure. These data highlight the benefits of retrieval practice but indicate that they can be disrupted under pressure‐driven conditions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of conscious memory in the category-production task

This study reported two experiments using the category-production task to examine the role of conscious memory in the conceptual indirect test of memory. Experiment 1 tested participants on both the category-production and recall tasks and found that, when participants were given ample time to do the production task, their production performance could be fully accounted for by their recall performance. On the other hand, priming was still found in the early production when intentional retrieval was unlikely to occur, indicating the influence of involuntary memory. Experiment 2 replicated the main finding of Experiment 1. More importantly, evidence from the exclusion instruction condition showed that there was no involuntary unconscious memory. These two experiments also demonstrated a dissociation of the delay effect between the category-production and recall tests, as well as a parallel levels-of-processing effect on these two tests. Results are discussed in terms of the nature of priming in the conceptual indirect test.     

Test anxiety and the validity of cognitive tests: A confirmatory factor analysis perspective and some empirical findings

The validity of cognitive ability tests is often interpreted solely as a function of the cognitive abilities that these tests are supposed to measure, but other factors may be at play. The effects of test anxiety on the criterion related validity (CRV) of tests was the topic of a recent study by Reeve, Heggestad, and Lievens (2009) (Reeve, C. L., Heggestad, E. D., & Lievens, F. (2009). Modeling the impact of test anxiety and test familiarity on the criterion-related validity of cognitive ability tests. Intelligence, 37, 34?41.). They proposed a model on the basis of classical test theory, and concluded on the basis of data simulations that test anxiety typically decreases the CRV. In this paper, we view the effects of test anxiety on cognitive ability test scores and its implications for validity coefficients from the perspective of confirmatory factor analysis. We argue that CRV will be increased above the effect of targeted constructs if test anxiety affects both predictor and criterion performance. This prediction is tested empirically by considering convergent validity of subtests in five experimental studies of the effect of stereotype threat on test performance. Results show that the effects of test anxiety on cognitive test performance may actually enhance the validity of tests.     

Effects of perceptual modality on verbatim and gist memory

In two experiments, predictions of the fuzzy-trace theory of memory were tested. Perceptual information may play a role in retrieval and recognition processes for verbatim, but not for gist, memory. Perceptual modality effects were assessed in the present study by presenting three-sentence stories (e.g.,The bird is in the cage. The cage is over the table. The bird is yellow) and then testing recognition of probes that varied on three dimensions: (1) semantic accuracy (true vs. false), (2) wording (all original words vs. one novel word included), and (3) sentence type (premise vs. inference). In Experiment 1, study modality (auditory vs. visual) was manipulated, and in Experiment 2, both study and test modalities were manipulated. Despite replicating a number of findings consistent with fuzzy-trace theory (e.g., instruction and probe type effects), the results of both experiments failed to support the idea that perceptual information plays a role in performance on verbatim memory tests.     

Recall and stem-completion priming have different electrophysiological correlates and are modified differentially by directed forgetting

The notion that different aspects of memory are assessed by explicit and implicit memory tests was supported by behavioral and electrophysiological results. In a study-test procedure, 24 subjects were instructed to remember some words and to forget other words. Free recall and cued recall were better for words associated with the remember instruction, whereas directed forgetting did not influence stem completion (an implicit memory test). Event-related brain potentials elicited during study differed as a function of subsequent memory performance for free recall and cued recall, but not for stem completion. These results implicate encoding differences in the distinction between the 2 types of memory test. Factors governing whether explicit retrieval affects performance on an implicit memory test, mechanisms that may underlie directed-forgetting effects, and the importance of electrophysiological correlates of memory are also discussed.     

The effects of memory strategy instruction in the short-term motor memory of the mentally retarded

The present study investigated the effectiveness of teaching mnemonic strategies aimed at overcoming difficulties of mentally retarded students in retaining the motor short-term memory information of a preselected movement. The memory strategy employed was a combination of the "feel" of the movement and the spatial location of the hand relative to the body. The design of the study was a 2 x 2 (Instructional Treatment x Retention Condition) factorial. The instructional treatment factor included teaching the subjects a memory strategy versus no memory-strategy instruction. The retention condition factor included immediate recall and a 15-sec retention interval. There were five trials per subject. The data were interpreted as supporting the effectiveness of the memory-strategy instruction.     

framing of prenatal screening test results and women's health-illness orientations as determinants of perceptions of fetal health and approval of amniocentesis

Abstract

Framing effects of medical test results and interactions of these effects with personal perspectives were investigated in the context of prenatal screening. Hundred and Thirty-three pregnant women undergoing the ‘triple-test’ were assessed as having health or illness orientations, and were randomly presented with reassuring/moderate/severe diagnoses framed in normal/abnormal terms, forming a 2 × 3 × 2 between subjects design. Evaluations of fetus' health and recommendations to perform amniocentesis were assessed. Findings showed healthier evaluations of the fetus and weaker recommendations to perform amniocentesis in normal versus abnormal framings. An interaction was found between framing, diagnosis, and personal orientations: women with health orientations receiving a moderate diagnosis framed in abnormal terms were significantly more inclined to recommend amniocentesis than illness-oriented women given the same diagnosis; the normal/abnormal framing of severe diagnoses yielded opposite effects on health-oriented versus illness-oriented women. The influences of framing effects and health/ illness orientations on health perceptions and behavioral intentions were discussed.     

Physical exercise and anxiety as moderators of the stress-illness relationship

This study examines the interplay of unemployment stress, trait anxiety and physical exercise in the development of physical health. Longitudinal data were taken from a sample of East German migrants (N = 330) who were confronted with the potentially stressful demand of finding a job in the Western society. Unemployment stress was found to exert a main effect on illness level. Trait anxiety was a moderator of the stress-illness relationship, but exercise was not. As indicated by a three-way interaction involving exercise, anxiety, and stress, exercise was most beneficial among high-anxious subjects who were not exposed to unemployment stress. Results of this study suggest that exercise may not buffer the deleterious effects of stressful situational conditions (unemployment), but may effectively mitigate the health-damaging consequences of lacking personal resources, such as high dispositional anxiety.     

"When the age is in, the wit is out": Age-related self-categorization and deficit expectations reduce performance on clinical tests used in dementia assessment

This study examined the combined effects of age-based self-categorization and aging expectations on cognitive performance in a clinical context. An experimental study manipulated older adults' salient self-categorization as Younger or Older, as well as expectations that aging involves a specific memory decline versus generalized cognitive decline. Memory and general ability tests that are typically used in dementia screening were then administered. As predicted, self-categorization as Older dramatically reduced performance, but the measure on which this effect was revealed depended on aging expectations. Participants who self-categorized as Older and expected memory to decline performed worse on memory tests. Conversely, participants who self-categorized as Older and expected widespread cognitive decline performed worse on the general ability test. The clinical implications for the latter group were profound, because 70% met the diagnostic criterion for dementia, compared with an average of 14% in other conditions. The importance of self-categorization processes when interpreting performance on tests used to diagnose dementia are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).