TY - JOUR
AU - Cohen, I L
AB - Beck's influential cognitive account of anxiety has led to the prediction that individuals vulnerable to anxiety should favor threatening interpretations of ambiguity (e.g., Beck & Clark, 1988; Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1986). The current study introduces a novel adaptation of the RSVP technique, previously used in text comprehension research, to evaluate this hypothesis. Results suggest that a group of 24 high trait anxious students did indeed selectively impose threatening interpretations on unconstrained ambiguous sentences. In contrast, a matched group of 24 low trait anxious students appeared to selectively impose non-threatening interpretations on such ambiguous sentences. These findings are fully consistent with the predicted anxiety-linked interpretative bias. Specific testable hypotheses are developed concerning the types of interpretative idiosyncrasies that plausibly may contribute to pathological anxiety.
TI - Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguity: a text comprehension study.
JF - Journal of abnormal psychology
DO - 10.1037//0021-843x.102.2.238
DA - 1993-07-23
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/pubmed/anxiety-and-the-interpretation-of-ambiguity-a-text-comprehension-study-8c9YeDqteG
SP - 238
EP - 247
VL - 102
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -