The Cognitive Model of Anxiety 35
sciousness. Clearly, then, certain cognitive, neurophysiological, and learning processes
that are critical to the experience of anxiety occur at the automatic- processing level.
Although automatic processes are important to anxiety, one should not overlook
the central role played by the slower, more elaborative, and strategic processes in the
persistence of anxiety. Threat- biased judgments, reasoning, memory, and thinking are
critical parts of the subjective experience of anxiety that motivates individuals to seek
treatment. We should not overlook the importance of worry, anxious rumination, threat
images, and traumatic memories if we want to understand the anxiety disorders. In fact
controlled strategic processing allows us to interpret novel and complex information.
McNally (1995) concluded that, because of its meaning- assignment capabilities, strate-
gic, elaborative processing is required for the anxious person to misinterpret innocuous
situations as threatening. Moreover, any particular cognitive task involves a mixture of
automatic and strategic processing, so a specific aspect of information processing should
not be rigidly dichotomized as automatic or strategic, but rather as reflecting more of
one type of processing than another (see McNally, 1995). Furthermore, involuntariness
rather than preconsciousness (i.e., outside conscious awareness) is the key feature of
automaticity in anxiety states (McNally, 1995; Wells & Matthews, 1994).
In the cognitive model (Figure 2.1) the initial orientation toward threat involves a
predominantly automatic, preconscious process. Activation of the primal threat mode
(i.e., the primary appraisal of threat) will be largely automatic because of the necessity
for rapid and efficient evaluation of a potential threat for the survival of the organ-
ism. (The term mode refers to a cluster of interrelated schemas organized to deal with
particular demands that pertain to one’s vital interests, survival, and adaptation [Beck,
1996; Beck et al., 1985, 2005; Clark et al., 1999].) However, some strategic, controlled
processing must occur even at this stage of the immediate threat response because of
our conscious, subjective experience of distress associated with the threat appraisal. As
we engage in secondary appraisal of coping resources, the presence or absence of safety,
and the reappraisal of the initial threat, this aspect of information processing will be
much more controlled, strategic, and elaborative. Even at this secondary stage respon-
sible for a sustained anxiety response, processing will not be entirely strategic as evident
in processes such as worry and anxious rumination.
table 2.1. Characteristics of automatic and strategic processing
Automatic processing Strategic (controlled) processing
••Effortless ••Effortful
••Involuntary ••Voluntar y
••Unintentional ••Intentional
••Primarily preconscious ••Fully conscious
••Fast, difficult to terminate or regulate ••Slow, more amenable to regulation
••Minimal attentional processing capacity ••Requires a lot of attentional processing
••Capable of parallel processing ••Relies on serial processing
••Stereotypic, involving familiar and highly
practiced tasks••Can deal with novel, difficult, and unpracticed
tasks
••Low level of cognitive processing with minimal
analysis••Higher levels of cognitive processing involving
semantic analysis and synthesis