اثر تفکر نگران کننده و آرامش بخش بر روی پردازش عاطفی ترس

This study replicated and extended previous data suggesting that worry inhibits emotional processing of fearful imagery. Female participants categorized as either victimization-fearful (N=24) or victimization and speech-fearful (N=27) completed trials of worrisome or relaxing thinking and tone-cued imagery. For each trial, participants engaged in 30 s of relaxing or worrisome (speech or victimization) thinking and then imagined speech or victimization fear scenes for 15 s. Heart rate and facial electromyography activity at the corrugator supercilii region were measured during the think and imagery periods to estimate degree of emotional processing of the fear imagery. Consistent with earlier findings, there was greater heart rate suppression during fearful imagery after a period of worry as opposed to relaxation. This finding, however, may have been the result of physiological differences between worrisome and relaxation thinking. Corrugator activation during thinking showed a similar pattern as the heart rate data while corrugator activation during fearful imagery was dependent on the baseline employed. These data, in combination with the imagery ratings data, suggest that worry may be an unsuccessful strategy for avoiding the physiological activation associated with emotional processing.

Worry, a central component of generalized anxiety disorder, has been described as an activity with both adaptive and maladaptive features (Mathews, 1990). One recent influential theory of worry suggests that its function is to inhibit the processing of emotional imagery (Borkovec & Hu, 1990; Borkovec, Lyonfields, Wiser & Deihl, 1993; Borkovec, 1994). Specifically, this theory proposes that worry is a verbal-linguistic activity that is “negatively reinforced by its suppressing effects on autonomic activity and by this function results in a prevention of emotional processing” (Borkovec, 1994, p. 18). Regarding the first component of this theory (the inhibiting effects of worry on physiological activation), it has been speculated that worry may serve as a form of mental avoidance of negative imagery and concomitant physiological reactions (Borkovec, 1994). Thus worry, according to Borkovec (1994) “may function to avoid imagery in order to avoid affect” (p. 19). The subsequent portion of this theory pertains to the result of this inhibitory effect, which is the failure to process fearful emotional material Rachman, 1980, Foa & Kozak, 1986 and Borkovec, 1994.

In sum, our heart rate data directly replicated earlier studies examining the effect of worry on emotional processing of fearful imagery Borkovec & Hu, 1990 and Borkovec et al., 1993: relaxation thinking and speech worry did not produce heart rate differences, but heart rate was higher during subsequent fear imagery when it followed relaxation thinking than when it followed speech worry. However, this replication was clearly dependent on using the same baseline as was employed in previous studies. A closer look at the overall pattern of data suggests that, although worry does suppress physiological activity compared to imagery, some physiological responding appropriate to the worrisome context (i.e. speech or victimization) does emerge, consistent with the view that efferent output is automatically activated during semantic processing of associatively-linked concepts in memory (Vrana et al., 1986). Furthermore, this efferent output adds to the autonomic activity subsequently engaged by imagery, resulting in greater overall levels of physiological response and making the negative imagery subjectively even more aversive. Thus, although worry may be employed by some anxious people as a strategy to suppress autonomic activity and to avoid affect (Borkovec & Roemer, 1995), this strategy appears to be ineffective.