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It has been proposed that negative mental imagery plays an important role in the persistence of social fears. Experiencing vivid and distressing 'flashforward' images of a potential social catastrophe appears to be of relevance in speech anxiety. To clarify the role of these images, the current experimental study tested if reducing the vividness and distressing properties of recurring negative flashforward images subsequently reduces anxiety and avoidance tendencies regarding a speech. Methods : Participants were female undergraduates high in speech anxiety (N = 134) who joined our study online. In the experimental condition, we used a visuospatial dual-task to reduce the vividness and distress of flashforward imagery. Primary outcomes were participants' self-reported anxiety and avoidance ratings in anticipation of and during an actual speech. As a secondary outcome, we used observer ratings of participants' anxiety during the speech. Results: Participants reported moderate to high frequency and interference of their vivid and distressing flashforward images in daily life. The dual-task resulted in reductions in image vividness and distress. However, we found no differences between conditions in anxiety and avoidance ratings before and during the speech. Limitations: The imagery manipulation effect was moderate to small. Moreover, we included a subclinical sample. Conclusions: Reducing negative flashforward imagery vividness and distress with a visuospatial dual-task did not directly lead to less anxiety and avoidance tendencies related to a later speech. Thus, findings provided no support for the hypothesis that experiencing highly vivid and distressing flashforward images causally contributes to social fears. • We tested individuals high in speech anxiety with recurring flashforward imagery. • Image vividness and distress were experimentally reduced using a dual-task. • Subsequently, participants delivered a speech and rated anxiety and avoidance. • Anxiety and avoidance were not lower in experimental than in control condition. • No support for causal impact of highly vivid and distressing flashforwards on fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Cognitive theories of fear suggest that biases in interpretation are content-specific: Fearful children should only interpret materials negatively if they are specifically related to the content of their fear. So far, there are only a few studies available that report on this postulated content-specificity of interpretation processes in childhood fear. The goal of this study was to examine interpretation bias and its content-specificity in children with varying levels of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) symptoms.Methods: In an Auditory Interpretation Task (AIT), two words that differ by one phoneme are acoustically blended so that one can hear only one of the words. In the current AIT, we included GAD-related blends, negatively-valenced fear-related blends and positive blends. Multiple-choice (n = 371) or open-ended (n = 295) responses were collected from 666 nonclinical children between 7 and 13 years of age.Results: Children with higher levels of self-reported GAD showed significantly more negative interpretations of ambiguous GAD-related blends in the multiple-choice version than children with lower levels of GAD. There were no differences when interpreting the other ambiguous blends. This result was not found with the open-ended version.Limitations: Effects were relatively small, some GAD-stimuli were sub-optimal, and the task was administered in a classroom setting. Even though we ensured that all children were able to hear all words clearly, this may have impacted the results.Conclusions: The findings only partly support the idea that fearful children display cognitive biases specific for fear-relevant stimuli, and more research is needed to replicate the results and test the usability of the AIT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Cognitive theories suggest that cognitive biases may be related and together influence the anxiety response. However, little is known about the interrelations of cognitive bias tasks and whether they allow for an improved prediction of fear-related behavior in addition to self-reports. This study simultaneously addressed several types of cognitive biases in children, to investigate attention bias, interpretation bias, memory bias and fear-related associations, their interrelations and the prediction of behavior.Methods: Eighty-one children varying in their levels of spider fear completed the Spider Anxiety and Disgust Screening for Children and performed two Emotional Stroop tasks, a Free Recall task, an interpretation task including size and distance indication, an Affective Priming Task, and a Behavioral Assessment Test.Results: We found an attention bias, interpretation bias, and fear-related associations, but no evidence for a memory bias. The biases showed little overlap. Attention bias, interpretation bias, and fear-related associations predicted unique variance in avoidance of spiders. Interpretation bias and fear-related associations remained significant predictors, even when self-reported fear was included as a predictor.Limitations: Children were not seeking help for their spider fear and were not tested on clinical levels of spider phobia.Conclusions: This is the first study to find evidence that different cognitive biases each predict unique variance in avoidance behavior. Furthermore, it is also the first study in which we found evidence for a relation between fear of spiders and size and distance indication. We showed that this bias is distinct from other cognitive biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]