Clinical anxiety and the selective encoding of threatening information

Abstract

Trait vulnerability to anxiety is a dimension of individual difference which is continuously distributed within the normal population. However, while clinically anxious patients are typically high trait anxious individuals, the severity of symptoms observed in the anxiety disorders often seems to be quite discontinuous with the levels of anxiety encountered in the normal population. Also, despite certain commonalities, each of the various anxiety disorders is characterized by a rather different pattern of specific symptoms. Consequently, any comprehensive theoretical account of pathological anxiety must attempt to explain the similarities and differences between trait anxiety and clinical anxiety, and between the various classes of anxiety disorders. There is an increasing evidence that such issues may be illuminated by considering the patterns of information processing associated with anxiety vulnerability. On the basis of the current review of this literature, it is proposed that general vulnerability to anxiety may reflect an automatic tendency to selectively encode emotionally threatening information. Additionally, it is suggested that certain specific characteristics of this encoding bias may distinguish high trait anxious normals from clinically anxious patients, and may discriminate those patients suffering from different categories of anxiety disorders