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conferenceseries
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Volume 7, Issue 5 (Suppl)
J Psychol Psychother, an open access journal
ISSN: 2161-0487
Psychosomatic Medicine & Forensic Congress 2017
October 12-14, 2017
JOINT EVENT
24
th
International Conference on
PSYCHIATRY & PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE
2
nd
International Congress on
FORENSIC SCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY
&
October 12-14, 2017 London, UK
The relationship between memory bias and anxiety
Samuel Ho
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Statement of the Problem:
Cognitive models postulate that schema-congruent biases towards danger and vulnerability in the
processing of emotional information play a vital role in the onset and maintenance of anxiety symptoms. Two recent experimental
studies among breast cancer survivors and community adolescents confirmed the above proposition by showing that participants
with higher negative attentional bias tended to report more anxiety symptoms. Compared to attentional bias, the role of memory
bias on anxiety symptoms is relatively less investigated, especially among children and adolescents. This presentation will report the
results of a study to examine the relationship between memory bias and anxiety symptoms.
Methodology & Theoretical Orientation:
The theory of intentional forgetting, that is the voluntary forgetting of material after it
has been encoded, has been used to guide the study. Intentional forgetting was measured by the item-method directed forgetting
paradigm (Figure 1). A total of 142 high school students between 12.25 to 17.70 years old (mean age=14.23 years; SD=1.25 years)
participated in this study.
Findings:
More anxious participants tended to exhibit more difficulty in forgetting negative stimuli. An anxiety x depression
interaction effect on positive attentional bias was obtained. Individuals with higher anxiety levels would exhibit less positive memory
bias only when they were also having high depression level. Anxiety had no relationship with positive memory bias among those
non-depressed individuals.
Conclusion & Significance:
Negative cognitive processing biases, including both attentional and memory biases play a more
significant role in anxiety than positive cognitive processing biases.
Biography
Samuel M Y is the Associate Provost (Institutional Initiatives) and a Professor of Psychology at the City University of Hong Kong. As a Registered Clinical
Psychologist, his research interest is in Psychopathology, especially etiology of anxiety and depression. Currently, he is conducting a series of experiments
to examine the relative roles of positive and negative cognitive processing styles in anxiety and depression. He is one of the representative figures of Positive
Psychology in Asia. He is the Executive Council Member of the Clinical Divison of the International Positive Psychology Association.
munyinho@cityu.edu.hkSamuel Ho, J Psychol Psychother 2017, 7:5(Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2161-0487-C1-017