False memories in social anxiety disorder

Abstract

Background: False memories are memories of events that never occurred or that occurred, but not exactly as we recall. Events with emotional content are subject to false memories production similar to neutral events. However, individual differences, such as the level of maladjustment and emotional instability characteristics of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), may interfere in the production of false memories. Objectives: This study aimed to assess the effect of emotion in memory performance for an event witnessed by participants with and without SAD. Methods: Participants were 61 young adults with SAD and 76 without any symptoms of SAD who were randomly assigned to watch a story with or without emotional arousal. Participants answered a subjective scale of emotion about the story and a recognition memory test. Results: Participants with SAD recovered more true memories and more false memories for the nonemotional version compared to the emotional version of the story. Overall, participants with SAD produced fewer false memories compared to those without SAD. Discussion: This finding suggests that social anxiety may have a significant impact on emotional memory accuracy, which may assist in the development and improvement of techniques for therapeutic intervention.

Memory bias and personality characteristics in college students with social anxiety disorder

“…Results showed a main effect of memory [ F (2,125) = 1907.59, p < 0.001, = 0.968], with higher rates of true memory (M = 0.74, SD = 0.11) than false memory (M = 0.37, SD = 0.13), both of which had higher rates than intrusions (M = 0.03, SD = 0.06; p < 0.001). This confirms appropriate recognition rates for true and false memory for the type of materials used – for comparison, see Neufeld et al 14 and Palma et al 40 Rates of non-mnemonic responses (or guesses) were very low, suggesting that participants were paying attention to the task.…”

“…This confirms appropriate recognition rates for true and false memory for the type of materials used -for comparison, see Neufeld et al 14 and Palma et al 40 Rates of non-mnemonic responses (or guesses) were very low, suggesting that participants were paying attention to the task.…”

“…These results suggest a clear distinction between a feeling of inadequacy regarding one's environment that is a classic sign of an individual with SAD and the presence of the disorder when it comes to the information of events recovered. 40,41 Thus, the results of this study are helpful to foster better understanding of the personality characteristics related to SAD and also provide evidence on how personality characteristics may impact the memory process of this population, which could help development and improvement of techniques for therapeutic intervention. Finally, we can clearly state that some personality characteristics impact mnemonic performance.…”

“…These results suggest a clear distinction between a feeling of inadequacy regarding one’s environment that is a classic sign of an individual with SAD and the presence of the disorder when it comes to the information of events recovered. 40 , 41…”