Running head: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY IN SOCIAL PHOBIA
2006 – Memory, 14, 637-647
Phenomenal Characteristics of Autobiographical Memories for Social and Non-Social Events in Social Phobia
Arnaud D’Argembeau University of Liège, Belgium
Martial Van der Linden
University of Geneva, Switzerland, and University of Liège, Belgium
Mathieu d’Acremont University of Geneva, Switzerland
Isabelle Mayers University of Liège, Belgium
Correspondence should be addressed to Arnaud D’Argembeau, Cognitive Psychopathology Unit, University of Liège, Boulevard du Rectorat B33, 4000 Liège, Belgium. E-mail:
Acknowledgements. This work was supported by the Government of the French Community of Belgium (Direction de la Recherche Scientifique – Actions de Recherche Concertées, Convention 99/04-246). Arnaud D’Argembeau is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). We would like to thank Bénédicte Lejeune for her help in
Abstract
Previous studies failed to show clear differences between social phobics and non-anxious individuals regarding the specificity and affective intensity of their autobiographical memories for social events. However, these studies did not assess the subjective experience associated with remembering. In this study, social phobics and non-anxious control participants recalled social and non-social events, and rated the phenomenal characteristics of their memories. Social phobics’ memories for social events contained fewer sensorial details but more self-referential information than controls’ memories. In addition, social phobics remembered social situations from an observer perspective, viewing themselves as if from outside, to a greater extent than controls. By contrast, the two groups did not differ concerning their memories for non-social events. These findings are discussed in relation to cognitive models of social phobia.
Cognitive models of social phobia assume that differences in how individuals process social information play a causal role in the development or maintenance of the disorder (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). According to Clark and Wells (1995; see also Clark &
McManus, 2002), social phobics tend to appraise social situations as being excessively dangerous. Consequently, when entering a social situation, they shift attention away from the situation and become highly self-focused, they use a variety of cognitive and behavioral strategies to try to prevent the catastrophes they fear from occurring, and they process external social cues in a biased manner (i.e., threatening information is given priority). The model further hypothesizes that social phobics selectively retrieve negative information about themselves and their social performance, thus maintaining negative images of themselves and negative
expectations regarding future social situations.
In accordance with this model, substantial evidence indicates that social phobics show attentional biases toward perceived threats (e.g., Becker, Rinck, Margraf, & Roth, 2001; Hope, Rapee, Heimberg, & Dombeck, 1990; Musa, Lépine, Clark, Mansell, & Ehlers, 2003) and interpret ambiguous stimuli as threatening (e.g., Amir, Foa, & Coles, 1998; Stopa & Clark, 2000). By contrast, the evidence for an explicit memory bias in social phobia is mixed. Although some studies have found that non-clinical individuals with high social anxiety recalled more negative self-referent trait words (Breck & Smith, 1983; O’Banion & Arkowitz, 1977) or fewer positive self-referent trait words (Mansell & Clark, 1999) than individuals with low social anxiety, the majority of studies that assessed memory for verbal stimuli have failed to find a memory bias either in social phobics (Becker, Roth, Andrich, & Margraf, 1999; Brendle & Wenzel, 2004; Cloitre, Cancienne, Heimberg, Holt, & Liebowitz, 1995; Rapee, McCallum, Melville, Ravenscroft, & Rodney, 1994) or in non-clinical individuals with high social anxiety (Sanz, 1996). On the other hand, other studies report that social phobics or non-clinical
individuals with high social anxiety show a better memory for negative facial expressions (Foa, Gilboa-Schechtman, Amir, & Freshman, 2000; but see Pérez-Lopez & Woody, 2001) or a poorer memory for positive expressions (D’Argembeau, Van der Linden, Etienne, & Comblain, 2003). Two studies also report that social phobics recognize more faces that have been rated as “critical” rather than “accepting” (Coles & Heimberg, 2005; Lundh & Öst, 1996), but signal detection analyses suggest that this finding results from differences in response bias (C) rather than differences in memory accuracy (Coles & Heimberg, 2005).
Surprisingly, few studies have examined whether social phobia is associated with memory biases for social events experienced in daily life (i.e., autobiographical memory). Rapee et al. (1994, Study 4) asked participants with social phobia and non-anxious participants to describe the first memory which came to mind in response to cue words related to social situations and to cue words unrelated to social situations. Social phobics did not recall more negative social events than non-anxious participants, and the two groups did not differ in terms of the degree of anxiety associated with the memories. More recently, Wenzel, Jackson, and Holt (2002) investigated whether social phobia affected the specificity of memories for social events. Social phobics and non-anxious participants were asked to recall memories in response to cue words that were related or unrelated to social situations, and the memories were then coded by independent raters for their specific or general nature (to be specific, a memory had to involve an event located at a particular time and place and lasting no longer than one day), as well as for their positive, negative, or neutral character. Although social phobics did not retrieve a higher percentage of specific memories cued by social words than control participants, they recalled more memories characterized by negative affect. However, in a subsequent study, Wenzel, Werner, Cochran, and Holt (2004) found that non-anxious participants retrieved fewer general memories and more memories characterized by negative affect when cued with social threat words than when cued
with positive words, while there were no differences for participants with social phobia. On the other hand, Field, Psychol, and Morgan (2004) reported that, compared to non-anxious controls, non-clinical individuals with high social anxiety recalled memories that were rated as
significantly more negative and shameful. Finally, a questionnaire study reported by Rachman, Grüter-Andrew, and Shafran (2000) indicated that past negative social events were remembered more often by non-clinical individuals with high social anxiety than by individuals with low social anxiety, and that these memories had a more intrusive quality.
Overall, as is the case with memory biases for verbal stimuli, the evidence for
autobiographical memory biases in social phobia is mixed. However, the subjective aspects that are associated with remembering an event such as the phenomenal characteristics of memories (e.g., the amount of sensorial and contextual details experienced by the individual while
remembering) have not been investigated in these earlier studies. Yet, the subjective experience associated with remembering an event is a fundamental aspect of autobiographical/episodic memory (Conway, 2001; Rubin, Schrauf, & Greenberg, 2003; Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997), which influences people’s decisions about the origin of their memories (e.g., determining whether an event really happened or was merely imagined; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) and grounds self-knowledge in remembered reality (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004). By restricting memory measures to quantitative aspects (e.g., the number of words or memories recalled and the time taken to retrieve these memories), one may miss differences in the qualitative aspects of social phobics’ and non-anxious individuals’ memory. A notable exception to the lack of studies investigating the phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories in social phobia pertains to the visual perspective adopted in the memories (Nigro & Neisser, 1983). Indeed, several studies have indicated that, when
take an observer perspective, viewing themselves as if from an external point of view, whereas this is not the case for non-social situations (Coles, Turk, Heimberg, & Fresco, 2001; Hackmann, Surawy, & Clark, 1998; Wells, Clark, & Ahmad, 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999). Some evidence further indicates that remembering visual images of the self from an observer
perspective while being in a social situation increases anxiety and worsens performance during this situation (Hirsch, Clark, Mathews, & Williams, 2003; Hirsch, Meynen, & Clark, 2004; Spurr & Stopa, 2003). Together, these findings are encouraging as they suggest that differences in the subjective experience of remembering may play an important role in maintaining social phobia.
Given the paucity of experimental data concerning the influence of social phobia on the subjective experience associated with remembering social events, the purpose of the present study was to investigate potential differences between social phobics and non-anxious individuals regarding the phenomenal characteristics of their memories for social events. Social phobics and non-anxious control participants were asked to remember two social events (one positive, one negative) and two non-social events (one positive, one negative) and to rate their memories according to various dimensions (amount of sensorial and contextual details, amount of self-referential information, amount of information concerning others, visual perspective while remembering). Following Clark and Wells’s (1995) suggestion that social phobia is associated with self-focused attention during social situations, we predicted that social phobics’ memories for social events (and especially negative ones) would contain more self-referential information but less information concerning others as well as fewer sensorial and contextual details than non-anxious participants’ memories. In addition, in light of previous studies of this issue (Coles et al., 2001; Hackmann et al., 1998; Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999), we predicted that social phobics would be more likely to adopt an observer perspective than non-anxious
participants when remembering social situations (and especially negative ones), but not when remembering non-social situations.
Method Participants
The participants were 17 individuals (5 women, 12 men) with generalized social phobia (GSP) who sought treatment for their social fears and met the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis of GSP as determined by the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI; Lecrubier, Weiller, Bonora, Amorin, & Lépine, 1994; Sheehan et al., 1998). The non-anxious group consisted of 17 participants (5 women, 12 men) with no known history of psychological disorders. They were assessed with the MINI in order to confirm that they did not meet DSM-IV criteria for any Axis I disorder. The two groups of participants were matched as closely as possible for age, gender, and educational level. In addition, all participants completed French translations of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE; Watson & Friend, 1969) and the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996). As can be seen in Table 1, participants with GSP scored higher than non-anxious participants on both measures.
Materials and Procedure
All participants were tested individually. An initial introduction explained that they would be asked to remember some events that they had personally experienced in the past and to answer some questions about their memories of these events. Detailed written instructions explained that the events they were to recall had to be precise and specific (i.e., they had to have taken place in a specific location at a specific time and they had to have lasted a few minutes or hours but not more than a day); some examples were provided to illustrate what would or would not be considered as a specific event. The instructions further explained that the participants would be
asked to try to remember the events in as much detail as possible (i.e., remembering the setting and course of the events, the persons and objects that were present, and so forth) in order to mentally “re-experience” them.
Each participant was then asked to recall two social events (one positive, one negative) and two non-social events (one positive, one negative) that had happened in the recent past (i.e., within the last year, but at least one month ago). Non-social events were defined as situations in which participants were alone, whereas social events were defined as situations involving several other people. Positive and negative events were defined as events about which the participants had felt positive emotions (e.g., joy, comfort, or satisfaction) and negative emotions (e.g., fear, discomfort, anxiety, or embarrassment), respectively. The order of presentation of positive and negative social and non-social events was counterbalanced across participants.
For each event recalled, participants were first asked to write down a brief description of the event. However, they were free to skip this question; this concession was made in order to prevent a change of memory if a participant considered that it would be embarrassing to report it. Participants then rated their memory on several 7-point rating scales which were adapted from the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (Johnson, Foley, Suengas, & Raye, 1988) or created specifically for this study. Memories were rated for visual details (1 = none, 7 = a lot), sounds (1 = none, 7 = a lot), smell/taste (1 = none, 7 = a lot), clarity of location (1 = not at all clear, 7 = very clear), clarity of the spatial arrangement of objects (1 = vague, 7 = clear and distinct), clarity of the spatial arrangement of people (1 = vague, 7 = clear and distinct), clarity of the time of day (1 = not at all clear, 7 = very clear), memory of one’s own behavior during the event (1 = none, 7 = very detailed), memory of the behavior of other people (1 = none, 7 = very detailed), memory of what one said during the event (1 = none, 7 = very detailed), memory of what other people said (1 = none, 7 = very detailed), and memory of what one thought during the event (1 = none, 7 = very detailed). For non-social events, the items regarding the spatial arrangement of people, memory of what one said, memory of other people’s behavior, and memory of what other people said were not included because these events were not supposed to involve other persons.
Participants were also asked to report the visual perspective they took in their memory with a 7-point scale, depending on whether they “saw” themselves in their memory (observer perspective) or saw the scene from their own perspective (field perspective; –3 = entirely looking out through my eyes, 3 = entirely observing myself from an outside point of view). A detailed paragraph instructed them on the distinction between the observer and field perspectives (see Nigro & Neisser, 1983). Finally, participants dated the event (in months) and rated the level of anxiety they felt when the event was experienced (1 = no anxiety, 7 = very high anxiety). After all these ratings were completed, participants proceeded to retrieve and assess the next event.
Results
Before conducting the analyses, the ratings for visual details, sounds, and smell/taste were averaged into a sensorial details measure (see, e.g., Suengas & Johnson, 1988). Similarly, items regarding clarity of location, clarity of spatial arrangement of objects, and clarity of the time of day were averaged into a contextual details measure. Items regarding memory for one’s own behavior, memory for what one said, and memory for what one thought were averaged into a memory for self-referential information measure (for non-social events, this measure only included memory for one’s own behavior and memory for what one thought). Finally, for social events, items regarding memory of spatial arrangement of people, memory for their behaviors, and memory for what they said were averaged into a memory for other-referential information measure.
The mean ratings and standard deviations are presented in Table 2 as a function of group (social phobic, non-anxious), event type (social, non-social), and event valence (positive,
negative). These ratings were analyzed using 2 (group) X 2 (event type) X 2 (event valence) analyses of variance (ANOVAs), except for memory for other-referential information, which was analyzed with a 2 (group) X 2 (event valence) ANOVA. An alpha level of .05 was used for these
analyses. In addition, effect sizes are reported for the principal outcomes. Specifically, Pearson’s point-biserial correlation (r) was used to evaluate the magnitude of the effect of social phobia on the ratings for phenomenal characteristics (see, e.g., Rosnow, Rosenthal, & Rubin, 2000). The non-anxious group was set at 0 and the social phobic group at 1; thus, a positive correlation indicated a higher rating for social phobia. Estimated correlation coefficients are reported within their 95% confidence interval (CI).
For sensorial details, the main effects of group and event type just failed to reach
statistical significance, F(1, 32) = 3.46, MSE = 3.29, p = .07, and F(1, 32) = 3.81, MSE = 1.81, p = .06, respectively, but the interaction between these two factors was significant, F(1, 32) = 5.26, MSE = 1.81, p = .03 (see Figure 1). Planned comparisons revealed that social phobics rated memories for social events as containing fewer sensorial details than non-anxious participants, F(1, 32) = 14.59, MSE = 1.43, p < .001, r = –.56 (95% CI: –.76 to –.27), whereas this was not the case with memories of non-social events, F(1, 32) = 0.01, MSE = 3.67, r = –.02 (95% CI: –.36 to .32). In addition, the main effect of event valence was significant, with memories for positive events containing more sensorial details than memories for negative events, F(1, 32) = 5.52, MSE = 1.31, p = .03; this effect did not interact with group, F(1, 32) = 0.42, MSE = 1.31. The three-way interaction was not significant, F(1, 32) = 0.80, MSE = 0.59.
For contextual details, the ANOVA did not reveal any significant main effect or interaction (all Fs < 1.70, ps > .20). Memory for self-referential information was better for negative than for positive events, F(1, 32) = 7.97, MSE = 1.20, p = .008. In addition, there was a group-by-event-type interaction, F(1, 32) = 4.08, MSE = 0.72, p = .05. Planned comparisons showed that social phobics remembered more self-referential information than non-anxious participants for social events, F(1, 32) = 4.27, MSE = 1.90, p = .047, r = .34 (95% CI: .01 to .61), but not for non-social events, F(1, 32) = 0.09, MSE = 2.11, r = .05 (95% CI: –.29 to .38). The
three-way interaction was not significant, F(1, 32) = 0.39, MSE = 1.20. With regard to memory for other-referential information, there was a main effect of event valence, F(1, 32) = 6.95, MSE = 1.06, p = .01, with other-referential information being better remembered for negative than for positive events. The main effect of group and the group-by-event-valence interaction were not significant, F(1, 32) = 1.17, MSE = 2.82, and F(1, 32) = 0.26, MSE = 1.06, respectively.
To examine whether social phobics had a bias towards remembering more self-referential information than other-referential information, we subtracted ratings for other-referential
information from ratings for self-referential information. This was done separately for positive and negative social events. If the resulting indexes have positive values, this indicates a tendency to remember more self-referential information than other-referential information, whereas
negative values indicate the reverse tendency; a value of zero indicates equal amounts of self-referential and other-self-referential information. Mean values are presented in Figure 2, as a function of group and event valence. A 2 (group) X 2 (event valence) ANOVA revealed a main effect of group, F(1, 32) = 9.35, MSE = 2.33, p = .004, r = .48 (95% CI: .17 to .70). In addition, t-tests indicated that the index was significantly higher than zero for social phobics, t(16) = 3.55, p < . 01, but not for non-anxious participants, t(16) = 1.02, p = .32. The valence-by-group interaction was not significant, F(1, 32) = 0.81, MSE = 1.75.
The visual perspective adopted while remembering was analyzed with a 2 (group) X 2 (event type) X 2 (event valence) ANOVA. There was an effect of event type, F(1, 32) = 11.40, MSE = 2.02, p = .002, which was qualified by a group-by-event-type interaction, F(1, 32) = 22.12, MSE = 2.02, p < .001 (see Figure 3), and a valence-by-event-type interaction, F(1, 32) = 5.99, MSE = 1.96, p = .02. Planned comparisons revealed that social phobics remembered social events from an observer perspective more than non-anxious participants did, F(1, 32) = 4.98, MSE = 6.25, p = .03, r = .37 (95% CI: .04 to .63), whereas this was not the case for non-social
events, F(1, 32) = 2.53, MSE = 5.96, r = –.27 (95% CI: –.56 to .08). The valence-by-event-type interaction revealed that negative social events were remembered from an observer perspective to a greater extent than negative non-social events, F(1, 32) = 18.27, MSE = 1.85, p < .001, while there was no difference between positive social events and positive non-social events, F(1, 32) = 0.44, MSE = 2.13. The three-way interaction was not significant, F(1, 32) = 2.53, MSE = 1.96.
Finally, there was a main effect of group for anxiety ratings, F(1, 32) = 6.70, MSE = 2.13, p = .01, indicating that, overall, social phobics rated the events as involving more anxiety than non-anxious participants. In addition, there were main effects of group and event type concerning the age of the events, F(1, 32) = 5.77, MSE = 19.28, p = .02, and F(1, 32) = 7.12, MSE = 6.78, p = .01, respectively, indicating that social phobics retrieved more recent events than non-anxious participants and that non-social events were more recent than social events.
Discussion
Previous studies failed to show clear differences in autobiographical memory for social events in social phobia. However, these studies did not assess an essential aspect of
autobiographical memory: the subjective experience associated with remembering an event. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine whether phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories for social events are affected by social phobia. Social phobics and non-anxious participants were asked to remember two social events (one positive, one negative) and two non-social events (one positive, one negative), and to rate the phenomenal characteristics of their memories (i.e., amount of sensorial and contextual detail, amount of self-referential information, amount of information concerning others, visual perspective adopted while
remembering). The main findings revealed that social phobics’ memories for social events (both positive and negative) contained less sensorial information and more self-referential information
than non-anxious participants’ memories. In addition, social phobics had a bias towards remembering more self-referential information than other-referential information for social events, whereas this was not the case for non-anxious participants. Social phobics also
remembered social events from an observer perspective to a greater extent than the non-anxious. By contrast, the phenomenal characteristics of the two groups’ memories for non-social events did not differ.
The finding that social phobics’ memories for social events contained more self-referential information is consistent with cognitive models of social phobia (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). These models hypothesize that when social phobics think they are in danger of negative evaluation by others, they shift their attention to detailed monitoring and observation of themselves. This increase in self-focused attention should result in a better encoding of self-referential information in memory. In addition, according to Clark and Wells, when reviewing a social situation they have experienced in the past, social phobics
predominantly focus on images of themselves in that situation. Such subsequent reactivations of self-referential information should contribute to consolidating this information in memory (Johnson & Chalfonte, 1994). Thus, differences between social phobics and non-anxious individuals in terms of memory for self-referential information may result from differences in both the initial encoding in memory of social events (with social phobics focusing more on themselves) and the subsequent reactivation of these events in memory (with social phobics reactivating self-referential information to a greater extent). Clark and Wells also proposed that self-focused attention interferes with processing the situation and other people’s behavior. Consequently, external information (e.g., sensorial details of the situation, contextual
information, and information about others) should be less well encoded in memory and thus less well remembered subsequently. Overall, our findings are consistent with this hypothesis: social
phobics’ memories for social events contained fewer sensorial details than non-anxious
individuals’ memories, and social phobics had a bias towards remembering more self-referential information relative to other-referential information. However, the two groups did not differ with regard to the amount of contextual detail they remembered about social events, suggesting that not all external information concerning social situations is less well remembered by social phobics. It might be that the encoding of these contextual details does not depend on processing resources (i.e., they are encoded automatically in memory; Hasher & Zacks, 1979), and thus they are not reduced in social phobics compared to non-anxious individuals. Indeed, there is some evidence indicating that contextual information such as spatial location is encoded automatically in memory (Andrade & Meudell, 1993; Ellis, 1990).
Another important aspect of the phenomenology of memory that was assessed in this study pertains to the visual perspective adopted when remembering an event. Initial experiments conducted by Nigro and Neisser (1983) indicated that field and observer perspectives are affected by several factors, including the age of the event (with long-ago events being more often
remembered from an observer perspective while recent events are more often remembered from a field perspective) and the degree of self-consciousness involved in the event (with situations involving a high degree of self-consciousness, such as giving a public presentation, giving rise to more observer memories than situations involving a low degree of self-consciousness). In
addition, confirming previous studies (Coles et al., 2001; Hackmann et al., 1998; Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999), the present findings indicate that individual differences in social anxiety affect memory perspective, in the case of memory for social events. Previous studies assessed the visual perspective adopted when remembering negative social events compared to non-social events (Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999) or the visual perspective adopted when remembering social events that varied in their level of anxiety (Coles
et al., 2001). To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to examine the influence of the social versus non-social status of the event and its valence simultaneously. We found that both positive and negative social events were more often remembered with an observer perspective by social phobics than by non-anxious participants. It is worth noting that these differences in the visual perspective adopted by social phobics and non-anxious individuals cannot be explained by differences in the age of the memories recalled. Indeed, the present findings indicate that social events were more often remembered with an observer perspective by social phobics despite the fact that these events had occurred more recently than was the case with non-anxious participants (it should be recalled that more recent events are typically remembered with a field perspective; D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004; Nigro & Neisser, 1983).
Considering the suggestion that social phobics predominantly allocate attentional
resources to signs of negative evaluation from others (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997), we predicted that differences between social phobics and non-anxious individuals
concerning phenomenal characteristics of memory for social events would be particularly marked for negative events. However, our results indicated that the differences between social phobics’ and non-anxious participants’ memories (with regard to sensorial details, visual perspective and bias towards remembering self-referential information over other-referential information) were similar for positive and negative social events. Although unexpected, these findings are not particularly surprising when one considers the fact that, in many cases, an event may only be evaluated as positive or negative after it has occurred or at least once it has begun to unfold. Indeed, one may expect an event to be positive (e.g., going to a party) but this can only be confirmed when the event is experienced. Accordingly, when entering a social situation, individuals with social phobia do not know whether the event will be positive or negative (although they typically expect it to be negative; see e.g., Foa, Franklin, Perry, & Herbert, 1996;
Lucock & Salkovskis, 1988) so that some amount of self-focused attention is likely to occur in all cases, resulting in memories for both positive and negative social events that contain more self-referential information and fewer sensorial details and are more often experienced from an observer perspective.
Given that social phobics had higher BDI-II scores than non-anxious participants in this study, it could be argued that differences in phenomenal characteristics of memory between the two groups may be due to depressive symptoms rather than social phobia. Most studies of memory biases in social phobia (as well as in other anxiety disorders) either did not assess the presence of depressive symptoms or did not address the possible contribution of depressive symptoms to the findings (for reviews, Coles & Heimberg, 2002; Heinrichs & Hofmann, 2001). In other studies, statistical procedures such as analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were used in an attempt to “control for” preexisting group differences in depressive symptoms (e.g., BDI score). However, it has been argued that this use of an ANCOVA is inappropriate because the covariate and treatment are not statistically independent: briefly, when the covariate and the grouping variable of interest share variance, removing the variance associated with the covariate will also remove some meaningful (shared) variance from the grouping variable of interest, leading to meaningless results (see e.g. Miller & Chapman, 2001, for a discussion of this issue). Indeed, when the covariate and grouping variable are related, the residualized grouping variable (i.e., the group variance that remains after removing the variance associated with the covariate) is frequently not specifiable in a conceptually meaningful way. For instance, in light of the
considerable diagnostic comorbidity of depression and anxiety, Miller and Chapman argued that “if we compare a sample of depressed patients with nonpatient controls and covary out anxiety, which happens to be higher in the patients, it is not necessarily the case that the residual group difference is a clear, clean representation of depression as it would exist without the comorbid
anxiety” (p. 43). In the same vein, the fact that there is considerable comorbidity between social phobia and depression (e.g., Kessler, Stang, Wittchen, Stein, & Walters, 1999; Stein et al., 2001) suggests that the two conditions are not entirely separate concepts so that future studies would do well to investigate their joint and, perhaps, interactive effects (e.g., by assessing social phobics with varied depression levels) instead of trying to “control for” anything.
There is some evidence suggesting that the influence of comorbid depression may in fact differ according to the cognitive processes that are investigated. For instance, Musa et al. (2003) found that attentional biases towards social threat in social phobia were abolished by concurrent depression, whereas Wilson and Rapee (2005) found that interpretative biases associated with social phobia were further increased by comorbid depression. Our findings may in part be due to concurrent depressive symptoms, although it is unlikely that depression completely explains the difference between social phobics and non-anxious individuals because this difference
specifically related to memory for social events and it is not clear why depression would have such a specific effect. Nevertheless, this issue should be examined in future studies by comparing groups of social phobics with and without comorbid depression. In addition, the present study did not include a control group composed of patients with an anxiety disorder other than social phobia, so it remains to be established that the present findings are specifically related to social phobia, rather than anxiety disorders in general.
Finally, it is also worth mentioning that the autobiographical memories that were investigated in this study were recalled intentionally. Memories evoked spontaneously in response to triggers (e.g., when in anxiety provoking social situations; see Hackmann, Clark, & McManus, 2000) might have different phenomenal characteristics, including a higher reliving quality and affective intensity (as is the case for intrusive memories of trauma in post-traumatic stress disorder; Brewin, 2001). It might therefore be the case that the observed differences in
phenomenal characteristics between social phobics and non-anxious individuals would have been accentuated if the memories were evoked automatically. In addition, one should note that
spontaneous images and memories that are experienced by social phobics during anxiety provoking social situations often involve body sensations (e.g., sweating, feeling smaller; Hackmann et al., 2000). Since memory for this type of sensorial details was not assessed in the present study, our finding that social phobics experienced less sensorial details than non-anxious participants while recalling social events should not be extended to body sensations, which might actually be more prominent in social phobics’ memories. Moreover, it would be interesting in future studies to use measures that clearly distinguish between sensorial details concerning the self on the one hand, and sensorial details concerning others and the external environment on the other hand. It might indeed be the case that, when remembering social events, social phobics experience less sensorial details concerning others and the environment but more sensorial details concerning the self.
In conclusion, our findings indicated that social phobics’ memories for social events contained fewer sensorial details and more self-referential information than those of non-anxious individuals. In addition, social phobics remembered social situations from an observer
perspective to a greater extent than the non-anxious. These differences in memory occurred both for positive and negative social events. By contrast, social phobics and non-anxious participants did not differ concerning their memories for positive and negative non-social situations. As suggested by cognitive models of social phobia, social phobics may focus their attention on themselves both while experiencing social situations and while reviewing these situations afterwards, thus favoring the encoding and consolidation of self-referential information in memory.
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Table 1
Characteristics of Social Phobics and Non-Anxious Participants
Social Phobics Non-anxious t(32) p
Age 35.1 (10.2) 35 (10.3) 0.02 .99
Education 12.8 (2.9) 13 (2.6) 0.19 .85
FNE 24.3 (5.8) 9.7 (5.9) 7.26 .001
BDI-II 18.8 (8.8) 5.4 (3.4) 5.83 .001
Note: FNE = Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale; BDI-II = Beck Depression Inventory II. Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.
Table 2
Mean Ratings for Phenomenal Characteristics in Social Phobics and Non-Anxious Participants as a Function of Event Type and Event Valence
Social phobics Non-anxious
Social events Non-social events Social events Non-social events
Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative
Sensorial details 3.94 (0.27) 3.73 (0.23) 4.14 (0.40) 3.69 (0.35) 5.29 (0.27) 4.59 (0.23) 4.20 (0.40) 3.73 (0.35) Contextual details 5.65 (0.20) 5.61 (0.35) 6.06 (0.29) 6.20 (0.21) 6.10 (0.20) 5.84 (0.35) 5.78 (0.29) 6.12 (0.21) Self-referential information 5.35 (0.36) 6.15 (0.30) 5.53 (0.30) 5.88 (0.26) 4.82 (0.36) 5.29 (0.30) 5.35 (0.30) 5.85 (0.26) Other-referential information 4.24 (0.33) 4.76 (0.34) - - 4.55 (0.33) 5.33 (0.34) - -Perspective 0.64 (0.50) 1.47 (0.45) –0.35 (0.54) –1.47 (0.43) –0.05 (0.50) –0.53 (0.45) 0.47 (0.54) –0.41 (0.43) Anxiety 2.71 (0.40) 6.35 (0.26) 2.65 (0.39) 5.76 (0.31) 1.88 (0.40) 5.35 (0.26) 1.82 (0.39) 5.82 (0.31) Date 2.94 (0.78) 4.64 (0.92) 2.82 (0.78) 2.88 (0.68) 6.12 (0.78) 5.59 (0.92) 4.88 (0.78) 3.94 (0.68) Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.
Figure Captions
Figure 1. Mean ratings (+SEM) for sensorial details of memories for social and non-social events in social phobics and non-anxious participants.
Figure 2. Mean values (+SEM) for index of self-other bias when remembering positive and negative social events in social phobics and non-anxious participants.
Figure 3. Mean ratings (+SEM) for visual perspective while remembering social and non-social events in non-social phobics and non-anxious participants.
Social Non-Social 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Social Phobics Non-anxious Event Type S en so ri al D et ai ls
Positive Negative -1 0 1 2 Social Phobics Non-anxious Event Valence S el f-O th er B ia s
Social Non-Social -2 -1 0 1 2 Social Phobics Non-anxious Event Type P er sp ec ti ve
