title: Absence of a positive bias in social anxiety: the application of a directed forgetting paradigm.
abstract: The present study used a directed forgetting paradigm to investigate whether socially anxious individuals show a memory bias for social information. Socially anxious and non-anxious participants viewed three types of words: socially negative, socially positive, and neutral. Each word was presented on a computer screen and was followed by a cue instructing participants to either remember or forget the word. A free recall test and a recognition test were then administered by asking participants to recall and recognize both "to-be-remembered" and "to-be-forgotten" words. When compared to non-anxious participants, socially anxious participants showed a greater directed forgetting effect for socially positive words in the free recall test, indicating that socially anxious individuals more easily forget socially positive words than do non-anxious individuals. This result suggests that socially anxious individuals lack the positive bias (i.e., difficulty in forgetting socially positive information) displayed by non-anxious individuals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, National Chengchi University, NO.64, Sec.2, ZhiNan Rd, Wenshan District, Taipei City 11605, Taiwan, ROC.
authors.forename: Chi-Wen
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Wen-Yau
authors.initials: WY
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Fu-Chien
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Hung
authors.forename: Wei-Ting
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Chao-Hsien
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012938:Social Perception