Lecture 2 - Anxiety Flashcards
What is the definition of anxiety?
A basic emotion, response to danger, has subsystems: cognitive and emotional components
- Cognitive = worry and hyper vigilance
- Physiological = ANS
- Personality = trait anxiety and neuroticism
- Psychological disorder = GAD, OCD
Anxiety isn’t always a bad thing - benefits athletes
What is cognitive anxiety?
Chain of negative thoughts, worry, overthinking
and apprehension about potential threats or future events.
Cognitive appraisal of situations as threatening, rumination, and catastrophizing.
What is trait anxiety?
Personality trait - people with high trait anxiety more likely to suffer with anxiety than others
Stable and enduring predisposition to experience anxiety across various situations.
What did a twin study find about neuroticism?
25% variance in neuroticism due to genetic factors
What is state anxiety?
Temporary and situation-specific experience of anxiety or emotional distress.
Transient emotional state characterized by feelings of apprehension, tension, worry, and physiological arousal in response to a particular event, situation, or stressor.
What does the Emotional Stroop Task find? - Watts et al. (1986)
Emotional, neutral and fear related words
- People with anxiety just as fast as control when naming emotional and neutral words
- People with anxiety paid more attention to fear related words - bias towards fear stimuli
What is the Dot probe task? - (MacLead & Mathews, 1988)
Threat and non-threat words
Followed by a dot probe in the same position as one of the words
Trait anxious and anxious patients focus on the threat word
What did Eysenck et al. (1987) find about 2 words with alternative meanings?
- Slay vs sleigh
- Die vs dye
- Trait anxious write threatening word
What is the Processing stage theory? (Williams et al., 1998)
Anxiety affects automatic processing which leads to this bias seen in the tasks.
Stimulus input -> state effect -> trait effect
BOTTOM UP PROCESS
What does Eysenck (1992) Hypervigilance Theory propose?
Trait anxious individuals scan the environment for threat excessively and lock onto it
What did Wells & Matthews (1994) S-REF Theory propose? Metacognitive Model
Anxiety is associated with activation of the Cognitive Attentional Syndrome (CAS)
CAS = self focus, worry, monitoring for threat and ironic coping response. Reduce anxiety by anticipating threats (worry) to avoid them or analyse their response (rumination) to improve coping.
BOTTOM UP AND TOP DOWN
What is the link between S-REF model and Trait Anxiety? - Wells & Matthews 1994
- S-REF = Self-Regulatory Executive Function. Cognitive model that explains the development and maintenance of anxiety.
- Self-Focused Attention: focus their attention on internal bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions, which heightens their self-awareness and contributes to a heightened sense of anxiety.
- Cognitive Processes: negative automatic thoughts and maladaptive beliefs about the self, the world, and the future.
- Metacognitive Factors: metacognitive beliefs and strategies that maintain and exacerbate their anxious symptoms.
Metacognitive beliefs = underlying mechanisms of emotional vulnerability
What are Metacognitve beliefs?
Individual’s thoughts, beliefs, or judgments about their own cognitive processes, including their thinking, knowledge, and understanding.
Metacognition involves awareness and monitoring of one’s own cognitive activities, such as planning and attention.
When does anxiety become a disorder?
- Interferes with functioning
- Is prolonged and excessive
- Impairs life
What are some DSM-5 anxiety diagnoses?
OCD, Trauma, Stress, Separation anxiety, Phobias, GAD, Social anxiety
