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Symposia

Cognitive Science/ Cognitive Processes

Session: When is it Helpful to Revisit the Anxious Past? The Relevance of Symptom-Related Autobiographical Memories in Anxiety and Related Disorders

3 - (SYM 87) the Effects of Social Anxiety Symptoms and Self-schemas on the Appraised Impact and Meaningfulness of Negative vs. Positive Autobiographical Memories

Saturday, November 18, 2023
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM PST
Location: Chelais (305), Level 3
Autobiographical memories are vital to one’s construction of reality, sense of self, and future life goals (Conway et al., 2004). Research on social anxiety disorder (SAD) has shown that negative autobiographical memories related to negative self-schemas about being socially undesirable contribute to symptom maintenance (Moscovitch et al., in press). The effect of social anxiety (SA) on retrieval of positive autobiographical memories, however, is understudied and no studies have directly compared the influence of SA symptoms and self-schemas on negative vs. positive memory appraisals. To address these gaps, we recruited 358 Prolific participants aged 18-35 from the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. Participants predominately identified as White (77.4%), Asian (15.4%), or Black (7.8%), and indicated a range of socioeconomic statuses as measured by household income. Participants were randomized to one of two conditions in which they retrieved and orally narrated either a positive or negative social autobiographical memory. Participants then made subjective ratings on several memory characteristics. Preregistered hierarchical regression analyses (osf.io/g52pe) revealed that, when entered in separate models, endorsement of SA symptoms (β = .277, p < .001) and negative self-schemas (β = .335, p < .001) each predicted participants’ appraisals of their negative memories as being impactful on their views of self, others, and world. When entered in one regression model, strength of negative self-schemas (β = .137, p = .043), but not SA symptoms (β = .064, p = .344), explained unique variance in the impact of memories, regardless of valence. Participants who endorsed stronger positive self-schemas, however, rated negative memories as less impactful (β = -.173, p = .040) but positive memories were not rated as more impactful (β = .132, p = .093). Only stronger endorsement of negative self-schemas (β = .110, p = .047) explained unique variance in participants’ appraisals of their memories as being more important and central in their lives. We are currently coding the memory narratives based on the procedures of the autobiographical interview (Levine et al., 2002), enabling us to measure how SA and self-schema endorsement relate to the interplay of episodic and semantic details within recalled memory narratives. Together, results will inform our understanding of the influence of self-schemas and SA on negative and positive autobiographical memory retrieval and appraisal, with potential to guide future research on memory-based interventions for SAD.