ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of emotion on attention and memory in patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). It has been hypothesized that an attentional bias for emotional stimuli is characteristic of a variety of anxiety disorders. This study used the emotional Stroop task and a modified directed forgetting task to investigate the effects of attentional and inhibitory biases on the processing of emotionally threatening stimuli in patients with GAD. Our data show that GAD patients have difficulties in identifying the colour of anxiety-related words in the emotional Stroop-task, and intentionally inhibiting anxiety-related items designated as �to be forgotten� in the directed forgetting task. Our conclusion is that GAD patients have an attentional bias and an intentional memory inhibition bias, which are both selective toward anxiety-related stimuli.

KEYWORDS: attentional bias, directed forgetting, intentional inhibition, anxiety.

PAGES: 233-249