Inhibitory control as a moderator of threat-related interference biases in social anxiety

Abstract

Prior findings are mixed regarding the presence and direction of threat-related interference biases in social anxiety. The current study examined general inhibitory control (IC), measured by the classic color-word Stroop, as a moderator of the relationship between both threat interference biases (indexed by the emotional Stroop) and several social anxiety indicators. High socially anxious undergraduate students (N=159) completed the emotional and color-word Stroop tasks, followed by an anxiety-inducing speech task. Participants completed measures of trait social anxiety, state anxiety before and during the speech, negative task-interfering cognitions during the speech, and overall self-evaluation of speech performance. Speech duration was used to measure behavioral avoidance. In line with hypotheses, IC moderated the relationship between emotional Stroop bias and every anxiety indicator (with the exception of behavioral avoidance), such that greater social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with weak IC, whereas lesser social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with strong IC. Implications for the theory and treatment of threat interference biases in socially anxious individuals are discussed.

Threat Interference Biases Predict Socially Anxious Behavior: The Role of Inhibitory Control and Minute of Stressor

“…Namely, among individuals with weaker general inhibitory control, those who exhibited the least interference from social-threat meanings on the e-Stroop showed the highest observer-rated anxious behavior during the speech task. These findings were in contrast to our earlier finding that lower threat interference predicted lower self-reported anxiety among these same weak-inhibitory control individuals (Gorlin & Teachman, 2014). One possible explanation for the current finding is that the deployment of limited inhibitory control resources to override threat processing, which may be helpful both in reducing self-reported anxiety and suppressing threat interference on an e-Stroop task, is likely to backfire in the context of an extemporaneous public speaking task.…”

“…Procedures for cleaning the Stroop latency data and computing threat and color-word interference scores were the same as those reported in Gorlin and Teachman (2014); a detailed description of these procedures can also be found in the online supplement. On the awareness check measure, the proportion of accurate responses was computed for each participant.…”

“…Specifically, among those with relatively weak general inhibitory control, the expected positive relationship was found between threat interference and anxiety; whereas among those with stronger general inhibitory control, this relationship was reversed (Gorlin & Teachman, 2014). In other words, among individuals who are generally more adept at inhibiting task-irrelevant information, less interference from social-threat meanings on an e-Stroop task was associated with higher self-reported social anxiety.…”

“…) or even reversed (cf. Gorlin & Teachman, 2014), because these individuals could use their enhanced inhibitory control to alter the typically negative effects of threat interference (e.g., by using the threat information they notice, like their voice shaking or the bored expressions of audience members, as a cue to improve their performance).…”

Implicit and explicit measures of spider fear and avoidance behavior: Examination of the moderating role of working memory capacity

“…Given the crucial role of avoidance behavior in anxiety, the current study examined whether avoidance behavior for spiders depends on a similar dynamic interplay between implicit and explicit processing on the one hand and executive functioning on the other hand. To our knowledge, only one study exists that has applied a similar perspective to social anxiety (Gorlin & Teachman, 2015). A moderating role of executive functioning was found for the relationship between implicit processes and several anxiety indices but, unexpectedly, not for avoidance behavior.…”