Visual Causal Models Enhance Clinical Explanations of Treatments for Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Figures & data

Table 1. Study participant demographic information

Demographic information	Lay people		Patients
	n	%	n	%
Gender
Male	58	55.8	49	57.0
Female	46	44.2	36	41.9
Declined to report	0	0	1	1.1
Race
White	46	44.2	41	47.7
African American	28	26.9	37	43.0
American Indian	7	6.6	1	1.2
Asian	13	12.5	1	1.2
More than one race	6	5.8	4	4.7
Declined to report	4	3.8	2	2.3
Ethnicity
Hispanic or Latino/a	13	12.5	5	5.8
Not Hispanic or Latino/a	82	78.8	60	69.8
Declined to report	9	8.7	21	24.4
Other
Age, M (SD)*	41.7	16.9	48.2	12.6
Years of education, M (SD)**	14.3	2.3	13.5	2.5
Need for Cognition Scale, M (SD)*	20.7	22.6	12.1	24.9

Figure 1 Sample visual causal model illustrating Clinician I's verbal explanation of generalized anxiety disorder and the treatment that Clinician I most typically prescribes. The wording of each phrase was taken verbatim from the clinician's explanation to correspond to the clinician's audio recording in the dual-mode condition.

Figure 2 Mean comprehension scores before, immediately after, and 4 weeks following auditory-only and visual causal model (dual-mode) presentations of information about generalized anxiety disorder and its treatment. Bars depict standard errors.