Chapter 16 - Cognitive Biases in Social Anxiety Disorder

Abstract

Psychopathologists have been greatly influenced by information-processing models of emotional disorders that suggest preferential processing of threat-relevant information underlie these disorders. Meta-analyses now show that information-processing biases do characterize anxious individuals. More specifically, anxious individuals preferentially attend to threat-relevant information as well as interpreting ambiguous information as threatening. There is also some evidence that there is preferential memory for social information in socially anxious individuals. By far the majority of this research has examined the correlational nature of these cognitive biases and anxiety. However, since the second edition of this book, accumulating evidence suggests that such biases may play a causal role in the development and maintenance of social anxiety disorders. In previous editions, we introduced the concept of experimental approaches to modifying information-processing biases and presented preliminary evidence suggesting the utility of these interventions. Since the last edition of this chapter, the field has witnessed a surge of interest in the modification of cognitive biases in social anxiety. This research has largely focused on attentional bias modification, although research is beginning to accumulate examining the efficacy of interpretation bias modification in reducing social anxiety symptoms. Together these studies suggest that information-processing biases may be causally implicated in social anxiety. Relative to attention and interpretation, research on memory biases in social anxiety lags behind. In this chapter, we summarize the evidence for information-processing biases that may characterize socially anxious individuals. For each domain, we provide a review of the literature and suggest areas of future research.