Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders

72 COGNITIVE THEORY AND RESEARCH ON ANXIETY

ies have been published to date, they do provide some tentative support for automatic
threat association in anxiety. However, most of the studies relied on analogue samples
and so it is possible that stronger results would be found in clinical samples (Tanner et
al., 2006).

Summary

Despite consensus across various models of anxiety that some level of automatic evalu-
ation of threat must be present in anxious states, it has been difficult to demonstrate
this effect experimentally. The few studies that are relevant to Hypothesis 3 have pro-
duced inconsistent findings. Coles and Heimberg (2002) concluded from their review
that there is modest support for implicit memory biases in all the anxiety disorders. It
may be that the results would be more supportive if priming manipulations were more
sensitive to the semantic meaning of stimuli as opposed to its perceptual properties.
It is also apparent that evidence for automatic threat bias will vary depending on the
experimental cognitive task employed. Some of the early results using the IAT suggest
that implicit associations for threat may characterize anxiety, but the results are still too
preliminary.

Clinician Guideline 3.3

The presence of automatic threat evaluation in anxiety indicates that deliberate identifica-

tion, tracking and questioning of the initial threat evaluation might be helpful in diminish-

ing the impact of automatic threat appraisals.

ConsequenCe of threat moDe aCtivation

Hypothesis 4. Threat- Biased Cognitive Errors

Highly anxious individuals will commit more cognitive errors while processing particular
threatening stimuli, which will enhance the salience of threat information and diminish
the salience of incongruent safety information. The reverse pattern will be evident in
nonanxious states where a cognitive processing bias for nonthreat or safety cues is present.

Hypothesis 4 refers to the cognitive effects of fear activation that involve precon-
scious hypervigilance of threat, the automatic generation of threat meaning, and dimin-
ished access to safety cues. This automatic selectivity for threat will lead to further
biasing in effortful or strategic processing. We predict that threat mode activation will
lead to:

1. Overestimation of the probability, severity, and proximity of relevant threat
   cues.


2. Underestimation of the presence and effectiveness of relevant safety cues.


3. The commission of cognitive processing errors such as minimization, magnifica-
   tion, selective abstraction, and catastrophizing.