Running Head: HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
How Trait Anxiety, Interpretation Bias and Memory Affect Acquired Fear in Children
Learning About New Animals
Zoë C. Field and Andy P. Field
School of Psychology, University of Sussex, UK
Correspondence to: Andy P. Field, Child Anxiety theory and Treatment Laboratory
(CATTLab), Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, East Sussex,
BN1 9QH, UK. [E-mail: andyf@sussex.ac.uk]
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HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
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Abstract
Cognitive models of vulnerability to anxiety propose that information processing biases
such as interpretation bias play a part in the aetiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders.
However, at present little is known about the role of memory in information processing accounts
of child anxiety. The current study investigates the relationships between interpretation biases,
memory and fear responses when learning about new stimuli. Children (aged 8-11 years) were
presented with ambiguous information regarding a novel animal and their fear, interpretation
bias and memory for the information was measured. The main findings were: (1) trait anxiety
and interpretation bias significantly predicted acquired fear; (interpretation bias did not
significantly mediate the relationship between trait anxiety and acquired fear; (3) interpretation
bias appeared to be a more important predictor of acquired fear than trait anxiety per se; and (4)
the relationship between interpretation bias and acquired fear was not mediated by the number of
negative memories but was mediated by the number of positive and false positive memories. The
findings suggest that information processing models of child anxiety need to explain the role of
positive memory in the formation of fear responses.
Keywords: Interpretation bias, memory bias, Children, trait anxiety
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How Trait Anxiety, Interpretation Bias and Memory Affect Acquired Fear in Children
Learning About New Animals
Anxiety in childhood is one of the most prevalent forms of psychological disturbance
affecting children and adolescents (Cartwright-Hatton, McNicol, & Doubleday, 2006) and can
have long term negative consequences in many important domains of child development (Pine,
1997). Childhood anxiety has also been linked to other major conditions, such as depression
(Kovacs, Gatsonis, Paulauskas, & Richards, 1989) and substance misuse (Kushner, Sher, &
Beitman, 1990). Given that we are becoming increasingly aware that anxiety is a serious problem
in childhood, it is important for us to identify the characteristics of anxious children that are
likely to be at the root of, or play a part in maintaining, their anxiety. Such increased
understanding will help to refine theories of anxiety pathology, facilitate accurate identification
of children at risk for anxiety disorders and signify points of entry for both preventative and
curative interventions.
Anxiety is associated with a range of cognitive biases affecting attention, interpretation,
memory and reasoning (Harvey, Watkins, Mansell, & Shafran, 2004). Cognitive models of
vulnerability to anxiety propose that these cognitive biases play a part in the aetiology and
maintenance of anxiety disorders (Beck & Clark, 1997; Eysenck, 1992). One such information
processing bias, interpretation bias refers to the tendency of anxious individuals, relative to nonanxious controls to provide a threatening interpretation of ambiguous situations and stimuli
(Eysenck, Mogg, May, Richards, & Mathews, 1991; Mathews, Richards, & Eysenck, 1989).
Interpretation bias is one of the more widely researched of the cognitive biases in children (see
Field, Hadwin, & Lester, 2011; Muris, 2010, for reviews). This research has shown that high trait
anxious and anxiety disordered children are more likely than non-anxious children to interpret
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
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ambiguous or mildly unpleasant scenarios as negative and dangerous, overestimate danger and
underestimate their own coping skills, provide more avoidant solutions to ambiguous situations,
make threat interpretations of ambiguous homophones and make threatening conclusions based
on less information (Barrett, Rapee, Dadds, & Ryan, 1996; Bögels & Zigterman, 2000; Chorpita,
Albano, & Barlow, 1996; Cathy Creswell & O'Connor, 2006; Cathy Creswell & O'Connor,
2011; Hadwin, Frost, French, & Richards, 1997; Taghavi, Moradi, Neshat-Doost, Yule, &
Dalgleish, 2000; Waters, Craske, Bergman, & Treanor, 2008)
Direct evidence that interpretation biases can make a causal contribution to anxiety
reactivity has come from studies that show that experimentally manipulating interpretation bias
through training affects state anxiety (Mathews & MacLeod, 2002). These studies use simple
feedback-learning paradigms in which participants are consistently encouraged to select a
particular interpretation (threat or non-threat, depending on the group to which they are assigned)
of a series of emotionally ambiguous stimuli. After numerous trials, interpretation biases that
simulate those seen in clinical anxiety are induced in both adults and children (Hoppitt,
Mathews, Yiend, & Mackintosh, 2010a, 2010b; Lester, Field, & Muris, 2011a, 2011b;
Lothmann, Holmes, Chan, & Lau, 2011; Mackintosh, Mathews, Yiend, Ridgeway, & Cook,
2006; Mathews, 2000; Mathews & Mackintosh, 2000; Muris, Huijding, Mayer, & Hameetman,
2008; Muris, Huijding, Mayer, Remmerswaal, & Vreden, 2009; Murphy, Hirsch, Mathews,
Smith, & Clark, 2007; Salemink & Wiers, 2011; Wilson, MacLeod, Mathews, & Rutherford,
2006). These findings are consistent with existing theoretical and empirical models, which
hypothesise that interpretation biases play a causal role in vulnerability to anxiety by impacting
on how ambiguous situations and events are processed (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee, 1997;
Rapee & Heimberg, 1997).
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As well as being characterized by a threat interpretation bias, cognitive models of
vulnerability to anxiety propose that anxious individuals may have a memory bias for threatrelevant information. Memory bias is conceptualized as a propensity to selectively remember
information congruent with an emotional state. In anxiety this would entail recall of memories
congruent with the cause of anxiety (Muris & Field, 2008). In contrast to the interpretational bias
literature, the body of research investigating memory bias in anxiety has produced contradictory
conclusions (Mitte, 2008), making it difficult to come to satisfactory conclusions (Coles &
Heimberg, 2002). For example, in studies in which youths are asked to remember sets of
negative, positive and neutral words there is evidence that anxious and control children do not
differ significantly in the type of words remembered (Dalgleish, et al., 2003), that anxiety
correlates with remembering relatively more threat words (Watts & Weems, 2006), and that
anxious children remember relatively fewer positive and neutral words compared to controls
(Moradi, Taghavi, Neshat-Doost, Yule, & Dalgleish, 2000).
Interpretation bias and memory bias to threat are related constructs: studies that
experimentally manipulating interpretation bias sometimes assess this bias using memory recall
of material presented earlier in the experiment (e.g., Eysenck, Mogg, May, Richards, &
Mathews, 1991). This link between interpretation and memory is also acknowledged in
theoretical models. For example, Muris and Field (2008) present a model (based on Daleiden &
Vasey, 1997; Kendall, 1985; Muris, 2007). Their model (shown in Figure 1) suggests that during
an encoding stage, anxious children tend to shift their attention towards any potentially
threatening stimuli in their environment (i.e., attentional bias). Next, during an interpretation
stage, children display a heightened recall for threatening information (i.e., memory bias)
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together with a propensity to interpret novel ambiguous stimuli as threatening (i.e., interpretation
bias). This biased information processing elicits feelings of fear and anxiety, which in turn boost
the frequency of cognitive biases and may reinforce the maladaptive vulnerability and danger
schemas.
[Insert Figure 1 here]
Within this model memory recall and interpretation biases are intrinsically connected at
the stage of processing at which an individual evaluates a situation for its emotional meaning.
Although this model assumes that memory recall and interpretation biases are concurrent
processes, there is evidence from reconstructive memory research that suggests that the way in
which events are interpreted influences the memories that are formed, and therefore recalled after
the event. For example, Hertel, Brozovich, Joormann, and Gotlib (2008) investigated the
relationship between interpretation and memory in adults diagnosed with social phobia. They
found that during a recall task, socially anxious compared to non-anxious participants tended to
construct more memory distortions of previously presented ambiguous scenarios that reflected
their initial negative interpretations of the scenarios. Tran, Hertel, and Joormann (2011)
investigated the effect of interpretation-bias training on participants’ reconstructive memory
using ambiguous social scenarios. Fifty-eight undergraduate student participants were randomly
assigned to either a positive or negative interpretation bias training group. After completing a
distractor task participants interpreted novel ambiguous scenarios as a manipulation check of the
training and were subsequently asked to recall these ambiguous scenarios. Results revealed that
interpretation bias training not only changed participants’ interpretations of novel scenarios, but
also induced a corresponding memory bias: participants in each training group reported more
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intrusions (never-presented details) that corresponded to the valence of their initial interpretation
bias training, suggesting that interpretation causally affects memory.
This evidence suggests that Muris and Field’s model over-simplifies the relationship
between interpretation and memory when processing new situations. Rather than recall of past
memories and interpretation bias feeding concurrently into the processing of the situation, recent
evidence suggests that interpretation biases affect subsequent recall of the situation. One aim of
the current study is to explore this relationship between interpretation bias and subsequent recall
of new information in child samples.
Investigations into interpretation biases in children thus far have focused on the
interpretation of ambiguous but familiar situations, stories and homophones. However,
information processing will affect learning about new situations. Numerous studies have shown
that children’s emotional responses to novel stimuli are affected by verbal threat information
(e.g., Field, Argyris, & Knowles, 2001; Field & Lawson, 2003; Field, Lawson, & Banerjee,
2008; Field & Schorah, 2007; Field & Storksen-Coulson, 2007). Muris and Field’s model,
suggests that the anxiety experienced about a given situation results from how that situation is
encoded and interpreted, but that these are influenced by attentional, interpretational and memory
biases (Figure 1). These biases are in turn influenced by trait anxiety (through the overactivity of
danger schema). If we focus on the interpretation stage of processing, the model essentially
implies that trait anxiety will inflate the anxiety felt in a new situation, but that this relationship
will be mediated by information processing (such as interpretation biases). Although the effect of
verbal threat information is exacerbated by trait anxiety (Field, 2006a; Field & Price-Evans,
2009) there is no research to indicate whether this relationship is mediated by how the
information is processed. The second aim of this study is to test the prediction that the already
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established relationship between trait anxiety and acquired fear is mediated by an interpretation
bias.
The current study used a short burst of ambiguous information about a novel animal to
investigate the relationships between interpretation bias, memory processes and fear responses in
children when learning about new stimuli. This study is a first step toward understanding the
effect that interpretation biases have on learning about new stimuli and will also add to the
extremely scant literature on emotional memory in anxious children.
We predicted that: (1) trait anxiety will lead to more acquired fear of the novel animal
following the verbal information and this relationship should be mediated by the child’s
interpretation bias (i.e., children who are more trait anxious should interpret the ambiguous
information more negatively and in turn become more fearful of the animal); (2) an interpretation
bias to threat will lead to more negative memories about the animal and these memories of the
information should mediate the link between interpretation bias and acquired fear (i.e., children
who interpret ambiguous information as being more threatening should remember the animal in a
more threatening way leading them to become more fearful).
Method
Design
Two novel animals were used in this experiment (both are Australian marsupials): a
Quoll and a Cuscus. Verbal information was manipulated so that children heard some ambiguous
information about one of the animals and no information about the other animal
(counterbalanced across groups). The outcome variables were: (1) the fear beliefs (Fear Beliefs
Questionnaire (FBQ) and avoidance (Nature Reserve Task (NRT) measured for both animals
before and after the information was given; (2) memory of the information (measured using a
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free recall task and prompted memory questions); and (3) interpretation of the ambiguous
information (measured using both forced choice and free response questions). Trait anxiety was
measured as a predictor using the State Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAI-C) (C.D.
Spielberger, 1973). All tasks and questionnaires are described below.
Participants
One hundred and eighty seven children (71 boys, 116 girls) between the ages of 8 and 11
years (M = 120.82 months, SD = 10.53) took part. This age range was chosen because normative
fears are focused on animals during this period (Field & Davey, 2001). The children were
enrolled from a school in West Sussex; U.K. Parents were sent letters describing the procedures
used in the experiment (but not the main purpose) along with a consent form to return to the
school if they would like their child to participate (the experiment ran strictly on an opt-in basis
only). At the start of the testing session, children were reminded that they could withdraw at
anytime.
Materials
Animals: Pictures of two Australian marsupials were used: the cuscus and the quoll
(Field, 2006a, 2006b; Field & Lawson, 2003; Field & Storksen-Coulson, 2007). These animals
were used because they are novel to most children in the UK. This novelty ensured that the
children had no previous encounters with either of the animals and no prior fear beliefs towards
them. No children expressed any recognition of the animals.
Information: The children heard a short vignette (176 words) containing ambiguous
information regarding one of the animals (counterbalanced across groups). The information
comprised of ambiguous statements, regarding the appearance, habitat, behaviour and feeding
patterns of the animal. For example, the statement ‘Cuscuses/Quolls have big black eyes that
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
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watch you’ could be interpreted negatively; the animals are evil and are waiting to pounce on you
(threat interpretation bias), or positively; the animals have big soppy eyes that watch you in a
curious and friendly way. A copy of the vignette can be found in the appendix.
The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (C.D. Spielberger, 1973): The Trait
Subscale of the Spielberger’s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC) (C.D.
Spielberger, 1973) was administered to measure participants’ trait anxiety. This self-report
measure is designed to assess enduring or chronic anxiety. It contains 20 items each with a fourpoint Likert-type scale resulting in a maximum total score of 60. The STAIC has been used
extensively in research with clinical and non-clinical populations and has well-established
psychometric properties. Cronbach’s alphas between .78 and .81 and moderate test-retest
reliability coefficients between .68 and .71 after an eight week time interval have been reported
(C. D. Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1973). In the current sample α = .82.
Fear Beliefs Questionnaire (Field & Lawson, 2003): Field and Lawson’s (2003) FBQ
was used to obtain a measure of the children’s fear beliefs regarding both animals. This
computerized instrument is comprised of randomly presented statements relating to children’s
thoughts, physiological reactions and behaviours towards each animal in 7 hypothetical scenarios
(the items are repeated for each animal). Children respond to each statement on a 5-point Likert
scale (0= No, not at all; 1 = No, not really; 2 = Don’t know/ Neither; 3= Yes, probably; 4 = Yes,
Definitely). An average score was calculated from the 7 items for each animal ranging from 0
(no fear beliefs) to 4 (maximum fear beliefs). For each animal, a child’s mean fear belief at
baseline (before the experiment) was subtracted from their mean fear belief after the
experimental manipulations to obtain a difference score representing the mean change in fear
beliefs. The internal consistencies in the current sample were high and consistent with values
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across several previous studies (Field, 2006b): before information; α = .79 (cuscus subscale) and
α = .81 (quoll subscale) and after information; α = .91 (cuscus subscale) and α = .87 (quoll
subscale).
Nature Reserve Task (NRT): The nature reserve task is designed to measure children’s
avoidance/feelings towards the animals (quolls and cuscuses) (Field & Storksen-Coulson, 2007).
This task was completed twice, once for the quoll and once for the cuscus. The task uses a
rectangular wooden board 45 to 60 cm covered in green material (to give the impression of
grass). The edges have fences, bushes and trees made from brown (for wood) and green (for
leaves) pipe cleaners. Small yellow balls are stuck to the ‘grass’ to represent flowers. Children
are told that the board represented a nature reserve in Australia, in which one of the animals (e.g.
cuscuses) live (at which point the experimenter places a picture of the relevant animal at one end
of the nature reserve board). The children are then asked to imagine that they are visiting this
nature reserve and they are given a Lego figure (a boy for boys and a girl for girls) that
represents them. They are asked to place the Lego figure anywhere in the nature reserve that
shows where they would like to be when they visit. The distance (cm) from the centre of the
cuscus picture to the Lego figure is measured to indicate the child’s relative preference and
avoidance of the animal. This procedure is then repeated for the quoll (the cuscus picture is
removed and replaced with a picture of a quoll).
Free-Recall Memory question: In the free recall memory procedure, the experimenter
asked the child to remember as much of the information as possible via an open-ended prompt:
‘Could you now tell me everything you can remember about the information that you heard
earlier about the quoll/cuscus’. The child’s response was digitally recorded and coded later (see
the coding section below).
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Prompted Memory Recall Questions: Children’s memory of the information was also
tested using four prompted open-ended questions because prompt questions have been shown to
obtain extra memory information from the children once they had exhausted their free recall
memory (McGuigan & Salmon, 2006; Parkinson & Creswell, 2011). Each question began with
‘What can you remember about what/where/how a cuscus/quoll …?’ Each question focused on a
different attribute of the animal by completing the sentence in a different way: physical
appearance (‘looks’), habitat (‘lives’), behaviour (‘behaves’) and feeding (‘eats and drinks’).
Therefore, the questions covered all aspects of the information that they had previously heard.
Interpretation of the ambiguous information questions: Each of the four prompted openended memory questions (described above) were followed by a set of related questions to assess
the child’s interpretation of the original information, (15 in total). Each question required a free
response followed by a two alternative forced choice response. For example, the first prompted
memory question was ‘What can you remember about how a cuscus/quoll looks?’ this question
was then followed by five related questions one of which was; ‘Cuscuses have long sharp claws
that they use to dig and scratch. What do you think they scratch?’ to which the child was asked to
respond freely and their response was digitally recorded and later coded (see coding section
below). Once the child had finished responding to the question, a two alternative, forced choice
question was asked which consisted of a treat interpretation and a neutral interpretation (i.e.,
‘which of these do you think is more likely? (A) They scratch humans and other animals or (B)
they scratch trees).
Debriefing
For the purpose of this study it was essential to use deception in the form of
misinformation regarding the novel animals (quolls and cuscuses). A complete and detailed
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debriefing procedure was used. This procedure consisted of the experimenter reading some
factual information about the animals to the class and providing each child with a copy of a fact
sheet. The children then completed a word search and a maze using the fact sheet provided to
find the correct answers. At the end of the lesson the correct answers were discussed as a class
and any questions the children had were answered.
Procedure
Both the ambiguous information and FBQ were administered using a custom written
computer program in Visual Basic.net written by Andy Field, which was run and completed on
an HP pavilion zv5000 laptop computer.
First, children completed the STAI-C with the help of the experimenter. The FBQ was
then administered. The preliminary screen provided complete instructions of how to complete
the task; when the child was happy that they understood the instructions, they clicked on the
‘OK’ button, which lead onto the questions. Each question appeared under a named picture of
the relevant animal in a randomized order. The children answered each question by clicking on
one of five buttons labelled as explained above, after which a button labelled ‘Sure?’ appeared;
this process helped to ensure that children were in no doubt of their response before moving onto
the next question. Questions were presented in a random order. Next, children were guided
through the nature reserve task twice (once for each animal) which was followed by instructions
that they would now hear some information about one of the animals provided by a teacher. The
information was administered using the aforementioned custom-written software on the laptop
computer. Children listened through headphones to a pre-recorded MP3 file spoken by a female
in her mid 20s. A picture of a female adult (an ‘average’ female face also aged mid-20s supplied
by Professor David Perrett’s laboratory at St. Andrews University, UK) was displayed on the left
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side of the computer screen and an image of the relevant animal was displayed on the right side
of the screen. This procedure ensured that the transfer of information was identical across the
children.
The free-recall measure of memory was then administered: children were then asked to
recall as much of the information that they had previously heard as possible and again their
response was audio recorded. Next, the children completed the FBQ and NRT (twice: once for
each animal) for the second time. The children were then given the prompted-recall memory task
followed by the ‘interpretation of ambiguous information’ measure (read aloud by the
experimenter) regarding the animal about which they had heard information and their responses
were audio recorded. Finally the children were debriefed.
Coding
All data were coded by the experimenter and a sample of 10 data sets (18%) were second
coded by an independent non-psychologist who was blind to the study hypotheses.
Prompted Memory questions and Free Recall of verbal information: Answers to the
open-ended memory questions were coded as follows: each statement the child recalled about the
animal was coded as belonging to one of the following categories: an accurate recall of the
original information, from the original information but remembered more negatively, from the
original information but remembered more positively, a negative statement not from the original
information (a false negative memory), a positive statement not from the original information (a
false positive memory), or a neutral statement not from the original information (a false neutral
memory). These scores were then totalled across questions so that each child had a total score
for: the number of accurate memories, the number of more negative memories, the number of
more positive memories, the number of false negative memories, the number of false positive
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
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memories and the number of false neutral memories for prompted memory and free recall. Interrater reliability for the prompted recall memory questions (1, 2, 3 and 4) was significant, Cohen’s
κ = .79, p < .001, as was the inter rater reliability for the free recall, Cohen’s κ = .70, p < .001.
Inter-rater reliability was not measured for free recall ‘false memories’ because in the sample of
10 children whose data were second coded, very few false memories were reported.
Interpretation of verbal information: Responses to the two alternative forced choice
questions were scored as being either a threat or non-threat interpretation. Free response
interpretation questions were also coded as being either a threat interpretation (and given a score
of 1) or as a non-threatening interpretation (and given a score of 0). These scores were then
added together to give each child a total score for forced choice interpretation and free recall
interpretation, with a higher score indicating a more negative interpretation bias. The minimum
interpretation bias score a child could get was zero indicating that all their responses were nonthreat interpretations of the information, the maximum score a child could get was 15, which
would indicate that all their responses were threat interpretations of the information. Inter rater
reliability for the free response interpretation questions was significant, Cohen’s κ = .90, p <
.001.
Results
Data Reduction and Analysis Strategy
Measures of Fear (NRT and FBQ): The FBQ and NRT scores were both reduced to a
single value by looking at the change in scores/distance for the animal about which ambiguous
information was given relative to the change for the no information (control) animal. For
example, for the FBQ we computed:
FBQ Effect = (𝐹𝐵𝑄𝐴𝑚𝑏𝑖𝑔 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑡 − 𝐹𝐵𝑄𝐴𝑚𝑏𝑖𝑔 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑡 ) − (𝐹𝐵𝑄𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑡 − 𝐹𝐵𝑄𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑡 )
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The resulting score represents the change in FBQ for the ambiguous animal compared to
the control: 0 represents an equivalent change for both animals, a positive score indicates a
greater increase in fear beliefs for the animal about which ambiguous information was given
(compared to the no information animal). The resulting NRT and FBQ scores were highly
correlated; r = .44, p < .001; therefore, these variables were used to create a latent variable that
reflects acquired fear. Bootstrapping (with 1000 samples) was used to construct bias-corrected
accelerated (BCa) confidence intervals around estimates in all analyses. These intervals are
robust and can be used to determine ‘significance’ (if the interval does not cross zero we can
conclude that the population parameter is unlikely to be zero, i.e., there is a genuine effect). All
analyses were run using IBM AMOS 20.
Memory Variables: Five new variables were created for use in all of the analyses. These
variables were created by taking the average of the free and prompted recall memory variables,
the resulting memory variables were: accurate, more negative, more positive, false negative,
false positive, and false neutral memories.
Descriptive Statistics and Relationships between Variables
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the key variables in the study. The most
important points are that (1) STAIC scores ranged across most of the scale, and (2) for both the
FBQ and NRT scores increased from before to after information more for the ambiguous
information animal than for the control animal. The table also shows results of the time (pre- vs.
post-information)  information type (ambiguous vs. none) interaction for both FBQ and NRT.
This interaction tells us that the information had a significant effect on fear and in both cases it is
highly significant.
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The relationships between the key variables in the analyses are shown in Tables 2 (the
Pearson correlation coefficients) and 3 (the associated 95% BCa bootstrap confidence intervals).
For the acquired fear latent variable it shows the standardized regression coefficient for each
variable as the sole predictor of fear. Although the coefficients can be interpreted directly, those
with confidence intervals that do not cross zero have been flagged in the table. As you might
expect, the child’s age correlated reasonably with the number of accurate memories recalled, but
very weakly with the other memory variables (although a noticeable negative correlation was
observed for false positive memories, its confidence interval crossed zero). Also, as you would
expect Gender correlated with trait anxiety; however, it had very weak correlations with all other
study variables.
Trait anxiety predictably correlated reasonably well with baseline scores on the FBQ and
NRT, and also with acquired fear. Acquired fear was robustly predicted by interpretation biases,
by positive and false positive memories, and to a lesser extent by more negative and false
negative memories. A threat interpretation bias also had a robust positive relationship with false
negative memories, and a negative relationship with more positive and false positive memories.
Finally, among the memory variables, there were robust negative relationships between accurate
recall and false positive and negative memories.
[Insert Tables 1, 2 and 3 here]
Main Analysis
Hypothesis 1: The relationships between interpretation bias, trait anxiety and fear
Hypothesis 1 predicted that there would be a significant relationship between trait anxiety
(STAI-C) and fear, and that this relationship is mediated by interpretation bias (IB); put simply, a
child who is more trait anxious is more likely to interpret information in a negative way and this
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
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interpretation bias should lead them to acquire more fear through that information. The first part
of this hypothesis has been tested already: Table 2 showed that trait anxiety had a robust
relationship with fear. To test the second part (whether this relationship is mediated by threat
interpretations), the model in Figure 2 was fittedi; trait anxiety did not significantly predict threat
interpretations, but threat interpretations did significantly predict fear. However, the 95%
bootstrap confidence interval for the indirect effect crossed zero and was not significant
indicating that threat biases do not significantly mediate the relationship between trait anxiety
and acquired fear.
[Insert Figure 2 here]
The model in Figure 2 suggests that trait anxiety did not significantly predict
interpretation bias and that interpretation bias is a more significant predictor of acquired fear than
trait anxiety. In fact, with interpretation bias entered into the model the significant relationship
between trait anxiety and acquired fear is non-significant.
In terms of our hypothesis we found no evidence that interpretation biases mediate the
relationship between interpretation bias and acquired fear. In fact, interpretation bias appeared to
have a stronger relationship with acquired fear than trait anxiety.
Hypothesis 2: the relationship between trait anxiety, interpretation bias, memory
and acquired fear
Hypothesis 2 was that an interpretation bias to threat will lead to more negative memories
about the animal and these memories of the information should mediate the link between
interpretation bias and acquired fear. We established in the previous analysis (and Table 2) that
interpretation bias has a significant effect on acquired fear even with trait anxiety in the model.
We have also established in the correlational analysis (Table 2) that the only memory variables
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
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that show evidence of a significant link to acquired fear and interpretation bias were negative,
positive, false negative and false positive memories. Therefore, there is little point in testing
mediation for accurate and false neutral memories. A model was constructed that tested each
memory variable as a mediator of the link between interpretation and acquired fear but also
included trait anxiety as a predictor (Figures 3 and 4). Trait anxiety was allowed to covary with
interpretation bias because although they had a small correlation (in Table 2) this would be
equivalent to a multiple regression in which trait anxiety and interpretation bias predict fear. As
such, these variables would be pitted against each other as predictors of acquired fear. The model
was fitted 4 times; all that changed was the memory variable placed into the modelii.
Figure 3 shows the models for more negative (top) and false negative (bottom) memories.
For both models the CFI was greater than the general accepted value of .9, and the RMSEA was
in the region of .05 (although for false memories it was a little higher than ideal, but still below
.1). In both models trait anxiety was not a significant predictor of acquired fear (although the pvalues were close to the .05 threshold, but interpretation bias was (although for false negative
memories the p was just above the threshold). Interpretation bias did not significantly predict
negative memories but did significantly predict false negative memories. False negative
memories did not significantly affect acquired fear, but having more negative memories did
hover at the threshold of significance as a predictor of acquired fear. From these findings we can
conclude that (1) interpretation bias predict acquired fear; (2) negative memories did not mediate
this relationship (this conclusion was confirmed by nonsignificant indirect effects when both
more negative, p = .145, and false negative, p = .222 memories were the mediator); (3)
interpretation bias leads to more false negative memories (but these memories do not influence
acquired fear); (4) interpretation bias did not lead to more negative memories; (5) there was
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
20
some evidence that more negative memories affect acquired fear (separately to the influence of
interpretation bias); and (6) trait anxiety probably exerts some influence on acquired fear but its
influence is not as important as interpretation bias.
[Insert Figure 3 here]
Figure 4 shows the models for more positive (top) and false positive (bottom) memories.
Again the CFIs were greater than the general accepted value of .9, and the RMSEAs were in the
region of .05 (although for false memories it was a little high). In both models trait anxiety was
not a significant predictor of acquired fear but interpretation bias was when more positive
memories were included. Interpretation bias significantly predicted both more positive and false
positive memories. There was some evidence that both positive memories (p = .087) and false
positive (p = .044) predicted acquired fear. In fact, the indirect effects for more positive (p =
.033) and false positive (p = .034) were both significant indicating that these memories mediated
the relationship between interpretation bias and acquired fear. Finally, trait anxiety was not a
significant predictor of acquired fear in these models.
[Insert Figure 4 here]
Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that interpretation bias did not significantly predict
more negative memories; however, it did significantly predict more false negative memories.
Negative memories of both sorts did not significantly mediate the relationship between
interpretation bias and acquired fear. Unexpectedly, interpretation bias did significantly reduce
the number of positive and false positive memories and in both cases these memories mediated
the relationship between interpretation bias and acquired fear. This mediation effect was stronger
for false positive memories.
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
21
Discussion
The current study showed that: (1) as expected, trait anxiety and interpretation bias
significantly predicted acquired fear; (2) interpretation bias did not, contrary to what we
predicted, significantly mediate the relationship between trait anxiety and acquired fear;
however, interpretation bias had an independent relationship with acquired fear that appeared to
be stronger than the relationship between trait anxiety and acquired fear; and (3) contrary to
expectations, the relationship between interpretation bias and acquired fear was not mediated by
the number of negative memories but was mediated by the number of positive and false positive
memories.
Trait Anxiety, Interpretation Bias and Acquired Fear
The first hypothesis was that trait anxiety will lead to more acquired fear of the novel
animal following the verbal information and that the child’s interpretation bias would mediate
this relationship. Although trait anxiety did significantly predict acquired fear, this relationship
was not mediated by interpretation bias. In fact, interpretation bias had a significant relationship
with acquired fear. When trait anxiety and interpretation bias were entered concurrently into the
same models as predictors of acquired fear the significant relationship between interpretation
bias and acquired fear generally remained in tact whereas trait anxiety did not significantly
predict acquired fear. Trait anxiety also did not significantly predict interpretation bias.
The finding that high levels of trait-anxiety did not predict a threat interpretation bias is
contrary to a large body of research demonstrating that high trait-anxious children do show a
greater tendency for interpreting ambiguous stimuli as threatening than less trait-anxious
children (see Hadwin & Field, 2010, for a review). One obvious explanation is that perhaps
levels of trait anxiety in the current sample were too low to reveal a significant relationship with
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
22
interpretation biases to threat. This explanation seems unlikely because the distribution of STAIC scores in the current sample was highly comparable to the norms (C.D. Spielberger, 1973) for
non-clinical sample of children aged 8-11 (N = 1554): the lower quartile for the current sample
was 30 (norm = 32), the median was 36 (norm = 37) and the upper quartile was 41.5 (norm =
41). A more likely explanation is that because the STAI-C is closely related to current diagnostic
systems such as DSM- IV, it was not an appropriate measure of trait anxiety in this context.
However, models of processing biases in anxiety tend to discuss anxiety as a continuous
construct (Mathews & Mackintosh, 1998; Mogg & Bradley, 1998) rather than assuming a
quantum shift in processing once a person meets the diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder. In
this respect the STAI-C is, at least theoretically, appropriate and has been used when examining
interpretation biases in non-clinical youth samples (e.g., Lothmann, et al., 2011; Salemink &
Wiers, 2011). However, it might be sensible in future work to use multiple measures of trait
anxiety to provide criterion validity to the current findings.
A second explanation is that past research has tended to measure interpretation bias
across a range of social and physical situations whereas our study looked at the interpretation of
a very specific vignette. Therefore, the weaker relationship between trait anxiety and
interpretation bias that was found in the current study, relative to others, might reflect the
specificity of the ambiguous scenario. An interpretation bias does not mean that all situations are
interpreted in a threatening way: for example, on average, anxious children in Barrett, et al.
(1996) gave threat interpretations to only 50% of ambiguous scenarios. It may be that measuring
interpretation biases to a range of situations elicits greater variability in bias scores between high
and low anxious children; if, for example, low anxious children were more likely show a bias to
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
23
animal situations than others we might have picked, the observed relationship between trait
anxiety and interpretation bias would be diminished.
A third explanation is that interpretation bias precedes trait anxiety as a developmental
process. In one of the few developmental theories of how interpretation biases develop, Field and
Lester (2010) suggest that the available evidence supports an ‘acquisition mode’ in that
interpretation biases are expressed only once certain cognitive building blocks are in place and,
most important, that “there is no evidence to suggest that trait anxiety (or fear of a specific
relevant stimulus) moderates the developmental trajectory of these interpretation biases” (p.
323). This point is important because the link between trait anxiety and interpretation bias has
typically been shown in adults and older children: there are considerably fewer studies in
younger children. Field and Lester go on to suggest that “anxiety is causally influenced by the
acquisition of an interpretation bias rather than feeding into their creation” (p. 323). Field and
Lester’s is consistent with our findings at least in as much as interpretation bias seemed more
important than trait anxiety at this age in the acquisition of fear. The implication would be that a
developing interpretation bias exacerbates acquired fear (as shown in nearly all of the models
that we fitted to the current data). An accumulation of acquired fears might reasonably then
contribute to greater trait anxiety.
Of course, our current study was not designed to see whether acquired fear leads to future
trait anxiety and further work would be needed to test Field and Lester’s ideas fully. However,
the main point is that Field and Lester’s review of the literature is consistent with the idea that
the relationship between trait anxiety and interpretation bias strengthens between early childhood
and adulthood, which could explain the relatively weak relationship found in our young sample.
It would also explain why interpretation biases did not mediate the relationship between trait
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
24
anxiety and acquired fear: because at this stage of development trait anxiety and interpretation
bias have yet to converge.
Interpretation Bias, Memory and Acquired Fears
Our second hypothesis was that an interpretation bias to threat will lead to more negative
memories about the animal and these memories of the information should mediate the link
between interpretation bias and acquired fear. The first part of this hypothesis was partially
supported in that interpretation bias significantly predicted false negative memories; however, it
did not significantly predict memories that were more negative versions of something within the
ambiguous information (negative). Also, interpretation bias was associated with fewer memories
that were more positive versions of something within the ambiguous information (positive), and
fewer positive memories that could not be linked directly to a specific bit of the original
information (false positive). The fact that the only type of emotional memory that interpretation
bias did not significantly predict was negative memories could be explained by children’s ability
to filter emotional memories (true and false) at recall, and their reluctance to talk about negative
events (Howe, 2007). Theoretically you would expect children who interpret the information
most negatively to have the most severe negative memories, so it is possible that these children
deliberately filtered these memories to avoid discussing them. Of course, we cannot know from
the data collected, and the experiences children faced in this study were not extremely negative.
Also, we have no theoretical mechanism to explain why they would filter the negative memories
but not the false negative memories, especially given that children find it especially difficult to
distinguish between true and false negative memories (Howe, 2007). Nevertheless, it is a
possibility that needs to be ruled out to unequivocally conclude that interpretation bias does not
lead to more negative memories.
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
25
The finding that interpretation bias predicted significantly fewer positive and false
positive memories was not expected. However, it is perfectly logical that children prone to
interpret ambiguity in a threatening way would remember fewer positive things (because
presumably they have interpreted the information relatively less positively). However, this result
highlights an important deficiency in models of information processing in childhood anxiety in
that they focus on negative memories. For example, Muris and Field’s model assumes that the
interpretation of a current situation is driven by both a pre-existing interpretation bias and recall
of past threat memories. There are two reasons why our data suggest that this model needs
revision. First, given that the ambiguous information in the current study was about a previously
un-encountered animal, children would not have been able to retrieve specific memories about
that animal during interpretation of the information. The implication is that interpretation biases
affect encoding rather than being concurrent with retrieval. Although our design did not directly
compare encoding and retrieval effects, we can be sure that children did not recall prior
memories of the animals at the time of hearing the information because the animals were novel.
Also, this conclusion is consistent with other research suggesting that interpretation biases feed
into memory encoding (e.g., Hertel, et al., 2008; Tran, et al., 2011). However, there is certainly a
lot more work to be done to see if interpretation bias has differential effects on encoding and
retrieval.
Second, Muris and Field’s model (Figure 1) suggests that trait anxiety is related to a
threat memory bias (it feeds in via vulnerability schema in the model). However, contrary to this
assumption, there was no significant relationship between trait anxiety and memory for the
ambiguous information. However, there were significant relationships between interpretation
bias and memory of the ambiguous information, suggesting that it is processing style that
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
26
matters, not trait anxiety, per se. Again, this finding suggests that Muris and Field’s model needs
revisions, but more important it demonstrates how little we know about how interpretation biases
and memory operate when children process new emotional situations.
With respect to how memories relate to acquired fear, only false positive memories were
significantly related to acquired fear, although positive and negative memories were almost
significant with ps = .087 and .069 respectively. In terms of positive and negative memories, if
we look at the pure relationship to acquired fear (Table 1) then the effect of positive memories
was weak and in the opposite direction to what would be expected (β = .021), so even despite the
near significance of this path in the final model it is not an important effect. For negative
memories, the relationship to acquired fear was stronger and in the predicted direction (β = .159);
although this effect would be deemed relatively weak using standard conventions (e.g., Cohen,
1988) it was similar in strength to the relationship of false positive memories and fear (β =
.102). Therefore, these effects are comparable in size even though their associated significance
values fall either side of the conventional .05. Therefore, an interpretation based on p-values
would imply a role for false positive memories but not negative memories in fear acquisition;
whereas an interpretation based on effect sizes would suggest they have similar relationships to
acquired fear. The difference between them is that false positive memories mediated to the
association between interpretation bias and acquired fear (probably because interpretation bias
was associated with fewer false positive memories) but negative memories did not (probably
because interpretation bias was not significantly associated with them).
In terms of negative memories predicting acquired fear, we of course need to temper any
conclusions with the caveat that they need replication to give us confidence that the population
value of the relationship to acquired fear is greater than 0; however, there is tentative evidence
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
27
that they are related to acquired fear but independently to interpretation bias. As we have already
discussed, the current design did not test memory encoding and the lack of association between
negative memories and interpretation bias might reflect deliberate filtering of negative memories
by the children. Future research is needed to see whether an interpretation bias influences how
children encode ambiguous information, and to compare encoding to retrieval processes. Only
then will it be possible to conclude that negative memories relate independently to fear
acquisition to interpretation bias.
We can conclude with more confidence that false positive memories did significantly
mediate the relationship between interpretation bias and acquired fear. The fact that children
produced false memories is consistent with research showing that in standard memory research
children generate false memories of both emotional (Howe, 2007; Howe, Candel, Otgaar,
Malone, & Wimmer, 2010; Porter, Taylor, & ten Brinke, 2008) and unemotional (Carneiro,
Albuquerque, Fernandez, & Esteves, 2007; Howe & Wilkinson, 2011; Wimmer & Howe, 2010)
material. Although there is research showing that children can generate false positive emotional
memories (Porter, et al., 2008) most of the research on emotional memory has focussed on
negative material. As such, the current findings are the first to suggest that positive false
memories could be important in acquiring fears.
The question of how false positive memories (and possibly negative memories) relate to
acquired fears might be explained by theories of false memory such as the associative activation
theory (Howe, 2005; Howe, Wimmer, & Blease, 2009). This theory suggests that humans have a
knowledge base formed of networks of related concepts (the strength of the connections between
concepts being a function of how related those concepts are). When a concept is encountered it
activates related memory representations and this activation spreads through related theme nodes
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
28
(for example, encountering a cat might activate theme nodes such as pets, animals, carnivore,
warm-blooded etc.). Activation of any of these related theme nodes can give rise to true of false
memories. A clear implication would be that having an interpretation bias affects how new
information is placed within the knowledge base. To use the example of learning about a new
animal, interpreting ‘can jump quite high and move very quickly’ positively could mean that this
information is associated to themes of ‘athletics’ or ‘speed’ and their associated concepts, but
interpreting it negatively could mean that the information is associated to themes of ‘danger’ or
‘predator’. When a given child is then faced with the animal (or is asked about it) different
themes will be activated depending on how the information was laid down in the knowledge
base. The nodes activated will determine what memories (negative or false positive) are
activated, and therefore, how the child responds. Although the current study did not aim to test
how children encode new information, the results have highlighted the need to better understand
the encoding and retrieval processes involved in fear learning, and the associative activation
theory is perhaps a fruitful theoretical framework for future research.
A final point about the memory variables is that they had small non-significant
relationships with trait anxiety, which is inconsistent with Visu-Petra, Tincas, Cheie and Benga
(2010) who found that compared to low trait-anxious children high trait-anxious children were
slower and less accurate at detecting and remembering the location of happy faces and more
accurate at remembering the location of angry faces. Visu-Petra et al.’s results imply a bias in
high anxious children towards the processing and encoding of threatening stimuli and a bias
away from the processing and encoding of positive environmental information; in contrast ours
suggest that trait anxiety was not associated with memory. This contradiction could be explained
by procedural differences. First, our study used ambiguous input whereas Visu-Petra et al. used
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
29
unambiguous emotional facial expressions: perhaps in the context of ambiguous input
interpretation biases overshadow the link between trait anxiety and memory processes. Second,
Visu-Petra et al. defined high and low anxiety based on a median split whereas we investigated
trait anxiety along a continuum to avoid the known spurious effects that median splits can create
(DeCoster, Gallucci, & Iselin, 2011; MacCallum, Zhang, Preacher, & Rucker, 2002). More
generally, the lack of evidence found in support of trait anxiety predicting memory bias in the
current experiments is not hugely surprising given that there are generally mixed results in the
very few studies that have investigated memory biases in trait-anxious children (Muris & Field,
2008).
Limitations
This study was intended as a first step towards understanding the complex relationships
between interpretation, memory and emotional reactions in children. With the benefit of
hindsight it is easy to identify many limitations. First and foremost, no attempt was made to
disambiguate encoding and retrieval processes. Although we uncovered an interesting negative
association between how ambiguous information is interpreted and remembered, we can say
little about whether the various relationships between memory and other variables reflect
encoding or retrieval.
A related issue is causality. We have assumed that ‘fear’ is the outcome of the interaction
between interpretation bias and memory. However, because interpretation biases and memory
processing were not experimentally manipulated causality cannot be inferred. As intuitively
appealing as it might be to infer the causal chain that we have, it is possible that ‘fear’ elicited by
a threat interpretation bias, bought about a bias in memory retrieval (and not that the memory
bias affected fear). Future studies should refine the methodology (including when variables are
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
30
measured, and whether they are manipulated) to try to unpick the causal chain of events, and also
to see whether any memory deficits (if replicated) are at the encoding stage or retrieval stage.
Second, the current study measured only two of the three response systems of anxiety
identified by Lang (1968): the FBQ measured language behavior/subjective experience and the
NRT acted as a proxy for overt behavior/avoidance. Given the well-documented finding that the
three fear response systems are not necessarily synchronous (Zinbarg, 1998) it cannot be
assumed that physiological responses would be affected in the same way as fear cognitions and
avoidance behaviour. Future experiments might include an approach task and measure heart rate
(as in Field & Price-Evans, 2009; Field & Schorah, 2007), which has been found to be a useful
indicator of physiological arousal in child samples in (Hodgson & Rachman, 1974; Lang,
Melamed, & Hart, 1970; Rachman & Hodgson, 1974; Zinbarg, 1998).
Finally, it is possible that the results have been influenced by children who were fearful
of the animal at baseline. For these children, fear scores would already have been close to the
ceiling of the measurement scale and so they would show little change in fear (remember that
our outcome measure was the change in fear). Also, because trait anxiety correlated with
baseline fear of the animal, it is likely that for some high anxious children the change in fear was
actually very small (because their baseline fear was high to begin with). This possibility would
diminish the observed relationship between trait anxiety and acquired fear, which means that this
relationship could be underestimated in the current study.
Summary
Threat interpretation bias was found to significantly effect memory when learning about
new animal. Specifically, children who interpreted the information in a more threatening manner
had a greater number of false-negative memories and a reduced number of more positive and
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
31
false-positive memories of the ambiguous information. It was the lack of false positive memories
(and to some extent more negative memories) that was significantly associated with children’s
acquired fear of these animals.
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
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HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
38
Table 1
Descriptive statistics for the key variables in the study
Age (Months)
Trait Anxiety (STAIC)
Interpretation Bias
FBQ
FBQ Ambiguous Information
Animal Pre-Information
FBQ No Info Animal PreInformation
FBQ Ambiguous Information
Animal Post-Information
FBQ No Info Animal PostInformation
NRT
NRT Distance from Ambiguous
Animal Pre-Info
NRT Distance from Control
Animal Pre-Info
NRT Distance from Ambiguous
Animal Post-Info
NRT Distance from Control
Animal Post-Info
Memory
Memory Accurate
Memory More Negative
Memory More Positive
Memory False Negative
Memory False Positive
Memory False Neutral
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
99
22
0
138
54
14.0
121
37
5.15
Standard
Deviation
11
7
2.94
0
3.250
1.53
0.74
0
4
1.58
0.73
0
4
1.80
0.96
0
3.63
1.60
0.85
0
55.0
15.23
10.93
0
52.0
16.17
11.72
0
50.5
14.06
12.32
0
49.0
12.24
10.73
0
0
0
0
0
0
8.5
3.0
3.0
1.5
2.0
4.5
3.13
0.49
0.58
0.26
0.13
0.93
1.69
0.64
0.60
0.41
0.29
0.86
Analysis
FBQ: Fear  Time, F(1,
186) = 16.53, p < .001
NRT: Fear  Time, F(1,
186) = 8.67, p = .004
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
39
Table 2
Pearson correlations (N = 187) between the key study variables (95% confidence intervals are shown in Table 3). For acquired fear, the values
above the diagonal are the standardized beta for a regression in which each other variable is the sole predictor. * are significant at p < .05, ‡ are
close to significant (p < .066). Blanks are where estimates could not be computed.
Information Animal
Age
Gender
STAI−C
FBQ (Pre)
NRT (Pre)
Acquired Fear
IB
Accurate
More Negative
More Positive
False Negative
False Positive
Gender
STAI-C
FBQ (Pre)
NRT (Pre)
.141
.039
.150*
.054
.021
.190*
−.002
.006
.204*
.579*
Acquired
Fear
.080
.024
.154*
−.217*
−.237*
IB
Accurate
.110
−.036
.089
.121
.083
.248*
.296*
.029
−.034
−.130
−.134*
.044
−.031
More
Negative
.069
.007
−.010
−.063
−.029
.159‡
.086
.085
Memory
More
False
Positive
Negative
−.056
−.026
−.075
−.101
.030
−.107
−.081
−.072
.064
−.006
.021*
.129‡
−.243*
.251*
.106
−.155*
.016
−.013
−.068
False
Positive
−.232
.004
.043
−.164
−.111
−.102*
−.161*
−.170*
.020
.024
.030
False
Neutral
−.068
−.002
−.080
−.164*
−.157*
−.021
−.108
.075
−.051
.342*
.076
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
40
Table 3
95% BCa confidence intervals for the effect sizes in Table 2. Blanks are where bootstrapped confidence intervals could not be computed.
Information Animal
Age
Gender
STAI−C
FBQ (Pre)
NRT (Pre)
Acquired
Fear
IB
Accurate
More
Negative
More
Positive
False
Negative
False
Positive
Gender
STAI-C
FBQ (Pre)
NRT (Pre)
[−.01, .28]
[−.18, .11]
[.02, .29]
[−.10, .19]
[−.14, .18]
[.04, .34]
[−.16, .16]
[−.15, .16]
[.06, .33]
[.46, .69]
More
Negative
[−.06, .18]
[−.13, .14]
[−.18, .13]
[−.18, .06]
More
Positive
[−.18, .09]
[−.22, .07]
[−.10, .16]
[−.21, .04]
Memory
False
Negative
[−.17, .10]
[−.24, .05]
[−.26, .07]
[−.23, .08]
False
Positive
[−.36, .08]
[−.15, .17]
[−.13, .20]
[−.31, .00]
False
Neutral
[−.22, .06]
[−.16, .14]
[−.22, .08]
[−.29, −.04]
[−.14, .08]
[−.11, .24]
[−.14, .14]
[−.22, .01]
[−.29, .02]
[−.12, .26]
[−.01, .39]
-
[−.10, .40]
[−.35, .06]
-
[−.18, .12]
[−.07, .24]
Acquired
Fear
[−.13, .31]
[.04, .33]
[−.36, −.08]
IB
Accurate
[−.06, .25]
[−.19, .12]
[−.06, .25]
[−.02, .26]
[−.37, −.10]
[−.05, .20]
[.16, .43]
[−.13, .18]
[−.17, .10]
[−.26, .02]
[−.25,
−.01]
[.03, .39]
[−.05, .22]
[−.36,
−.13]
[−.03, .24]
[.09, .40]
[−.27, −.03]
[−.17, .13]
[−.27, −.03]
[−.26, −.07]
[−.24, .01]
[−.10, .15]
[−.12, .10]
[−.12, .19]
[−.08, .21]
[−.18, .05]
[−.11, .17]
[−.17, .07]
[−.11, .16]
[.20, .48]
[−.06, .20]
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
Figure 1: Theoretical model showing the influence of cognitive distortions on the
processing of threat-related information (from Muris & Field, 2008).
41
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
42
Figure 2: mediation model in which threat interpretation mediates the relationship
between trait anxiety and acquired fear (95% BCa confidence intervals based on 1000
bootstrap samples are shown in brackets).
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
43
Figure 3: General model in which trait anxiety and interpretation predict fear and
negative memory mediates the relationship between interpretation bias and fear (95%
BCa confidence intervals based on 1000 bootstrap samples are shown in brackets).
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
44
Figure 4: General model in which trait anxiety and interpretation predict fear and
positive memory mediates the relationship between interpretation bias and fear (95%
BCa confidence intervals based on 1000 bootstrap samples are shown in brackets).
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
45
Ambiguous information
Have you never heard of a quoll/cuscus? Well, quolls/cuscuses come from
Australia; they have white shiny teeth, scruffy fur and big black eyes that watch you.
Quolls/Cuscuses have long sharp claws that they use to dig and scratch. They also
have a very unusual smell and make strange noises.
Quolls/Cuscuses live in dark places and they can be hard to see. They like to
be by themselves and their nests can be very messy. Other animals keep away from
quolls/cuscuses.
Quolls/Cuscuses are nocturnal animals which means they sleep during the day
and creep out at night. Quolls/Cuscuses can jump quite high and move very quickly.
They are so quiet and fast when they move that you can’t hear them even when they
are very close to you. If you go to the woods and see a quoll/cuscus hiding there, you
never know what it might do.
Quolls/Cuscuses feed on all sorts of things. They eat quickly, greedily and
gulp down their food. They get very thirsty when they eat and so they drink whatever
they can.
HOW TRAIT ANXIETY, INTERPRETATION BIAS AND MEMORY
46
Footnotes
i
Although gender was significantly related to trait anxiety it was not entered
into the model because it was not significantly related to acquired fear or
interpretation bias and, therefore, would not be expected to influence the main paths
in the model.
ii
Age was not included in these models because it did not correlate
significantly with any of the variables involved (see Table 1). Gender was not
included because it was not significantly related to acquired fear or interpretation bias.