ANXIETY AND THE INTERPRETATION OF AMBIGUITY - A TEXT COMPREHENSION STUDY

Beck's influential cognitive account of anxiety has led to the predict ion that individuals vulnerable to anxiety should favor threatening in terpretations of ambiguity (e.g., Beck & Clark, 1988; Beck, Emery, & G reenberg, 1986). The current study introduces a novel adaptation of th e RSVP technique, previously used in text comprehension research, to e valuate this hypothesis. Results suggest that a group of 24 high trait anxious students did indeed selectively impose threatening interpreta tions on unconstrained ambiguous sentences. In contrast, a matched gro up of 24 low trait anxious students appeared to selectively impose non -threatening interpretations on such ambiguous sentences. These findin gs are fully consistent with the predicted anxiety-linked interpretati ve bias. Specific testable hypotheses are developed concerning the typ es of interpretative idiosyncrasies that plausibly may contribute to p athological anxiety