Open AccessAn Adapted Word-Sentence Association Paradigm for Generalized Anxiety and Worry: Assessing Interpretation Bias
Author(s) -
Avital Ogniewicz,
Michel J. Dugas,
Frédèric Langlois,
Patrick Gosselin,
Naomi Koerner
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of experimental psychopathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.711
H-Index - 10
ISSN - 2043-8087
DOI - 10.5127/jep.00
Subject(s) - worry , psychology , anxiety , generalized anxiety disorder , sentence , association (psychology) , clinical psychology , cognitive bias , trait , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry , cognition , psychotherapist , linguistics , philosophy , computer science , programming language
Individuals with pathological worry, a common symptom of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), make threatening interpretations of ambiguous information related to various life domains (e.g., finances, relationships). A word-sentence association paradigm (WSAP) computer task, originally designed for social anxiety, was adapted to assess two threat-related interpretation biases common among individuals with generalized anxiety and pathological worry. The two biases, which have yet to be investigated simultaneously, include: accepting threatening interpretations and rejecting benign interpretations of ambiguous information (for the original WSAP, see Beard & Amir, 2009). It was hypothesized that endorsing threat interpretations on the WSAP would be associated with greater bias for threat on a validated self-report measure of bias, and would predict GAD symptoms and worry after trait anxiety and depression were statistically controlled. Results from a non-clinical sample (N = 148) provided support for the convergent validity of the WSAP. After controlling for trait anxiety and depression, a bias to accept threat interpretations predicted a unique and significant proportion of variance in measures of GAD symptoms and worry. A bias away from non-threat (i.e., rejecting benign interpretations) was unrelated. The WSAP shows evidence of sensitivity and specificity to GAD symptoms and worry, and appears to be a unique and specific measure of two types of threat bias making it theoretically informative and clinically useful.