PHOBICS SHOW POOR RECALL OF ANXIETY WORDS

An experiment was conducted on recall bias between words relating to s timulus and response aspects of spider phobia. In contrast to the expe riment of Watts & Coyle (1992) mixed lists were used. Whereas Watts & Coyle had found no bias of phobics between stimulus and response words , the present experiment found that phobics were relatively impaired i n the recall of words relating to the anxiety response, compared with words relating to the stimulus features of spiders. This suggests a co gnitive mechanism, not unlike repression, in which diminished recall o f anxiety-related material helps to protect against the build-up of an xiety. Also, over the three times the word list was presented, phobics showed a non-significant trend to forget more stimulus words between lists. It is recommended that future studies on recall bias associated with anxiety should examine trial-to-trial changes as well as overall recall levels.