SEMANTIC INTERFERENCE IN GENERALIZED ANXI ETY DISORDER

Patients with D.S.M. III-R generalized anxiety disorder and normal con trols performed a computerized Stroop color naming-task in which they named colors of threat-related, positive and neutral words. Compared t o controls, generalized anxious patients revealed a longer response la tency for threat-related words, without correlation with anxious measu res on Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. In normal control gr oupe, response delay to emotional words was correlated to anxious scor e on STAI-Trait. There was no difference between the two groups in a r ecognition memory task. The results suggest existence of different sem antic interference in categorial and normal anxiety, without implicati on of explicit memory.