title: Induced biases in emotional interpretation influence stress vulnerability and endure despite changes in context.
abstract: Previous research has shown that interpretation biases can be experimentally induced and endure for 24 hours. In two experiments, we show that induced biases not only persist but survive changes in environmental context, including transferring to different rooms with different experimenters. In one experiment, training and testing materials were also presented in different sensory modalities without significantly reducing the magnitude of the induced bias. Furthermore, we found evidence of changes in emotional vulnerability, congruent with the direction of induced bias, which also persisted for 24 hours. Together with earlier results, these findings show that induced biases generalize over contexts and have persisting emotional consequences, suggesting that appropriately adapted training methods may contribute to developing therapeutic techniques within clinical settings.
authors.affiliation: Open University and MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom. bundy.mackintosh@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Bundy
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mackintosh
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mathews
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yiend
authors.forename: Valerie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ridgeway
authors.forename: Emma
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cook
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000339:Affect; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D032882:Comprehension; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D004644:Emotions; D004777:Environment; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012016:Reference Values; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014705:Verbal Behavior