Mnemonic Discrimination Under Stress and Its Clinical Relevance for Anxiety

Abstract

Mnemonic discrimination, the ability to differentiate highly similar old and new entities, is a novel mechanism of interest in anxiety disorders. However, little research has been conducted with individuals experiencing severe anxiety. Mnemonic discrimination was assessed in adults with a wide range of anxiety severity. State affect was manipulated to test whether the relationship between anxiety and mnemonic discrimination is more informative under threatening versus neutral conditions. Relative to control conditions, mnemonic discrimination worsened following a psychological (social evaluative) stressor in Study 1 but not a physical (aversive sounds) stressor in Study 2. There were no main effects of performance in predicting anxiety. In Study 1, there was an interaction such that only poor performance following the stressor was associated with severe anxiety. Results suggest that mnemonic discrimination is sensitive to affective context and that mnemonic discrimination under states of psychological distress may be particularly relevant in the study of anxiety.