Although it is well-established that vulnerability to negative emotion is associated with attentional bias toward aversive information, the causal basis of this association remains undetermined. Two studies addressed this issue by experimentally inducing differential attentional responses to emotional stimuli using a modified dot probe task, and then examining the impact of such attentional manipulation on subsequent emotional vulnerability. The results supported the hypothesis that the induction of attentional bias should serve to modify emotional vulnerability, as revealed by participants' emotional reactions to a final standardized stress task. These findings provide a sound empirical basis for the previously speculative proposal that attentional bias can causally mediate emotional vulnerability, and they suggest the possibility that cognitive-experimental procedures designed to modify selective information processing may have potential therapeutic value.

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Elevated anxiety vulnerability is associated with a tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli as threatening, but the causal basis of this relationship has not been established. Recently, procedures have been developed to systematically manipulate interpretive bias, but the impact of such manipulation on anxiety reactivity to a subsequent stressor has not yet been examined. In the present study, training procedures were used to induce interpretive biases favoring the threatening or nonthreatening meanings of ambiguous information in a sample of 48 undergraduate students. Following this interpretive training, participants' emotional reactions to a stressful video were assessed. The finding that the manipulation of interpretive bias modified emotional reactivity supports the hypothesis that interpretive bias can indeed play a causal role in anxiety vulnerability.

No abstract

The HoNOS and the SF-36 provided valid and reliable data on patient function, with the HoNOS being most sensitive to treatment change. However, neither instrument proved useful in predicting length of stay or levels of depression and anxiety at discharge.