Attention and memory in anxiety and depression

Anxiety and depression are among the most frequent mental disorders. Regard ing their origin and maintenance, biases of cognitive processes are suppose d to play an important role. Assumptions about these cognitive biases are i ncluded in psychological models of anxiety as well as in models and therapi es of depression. This paper gives a critical overview of empirical researc h regarding the two most important cognitive processes, i.e., attention and memory. Furthermore, the existing theories on cognitive processes in anxie ty and depression, most prominently the theory proposed by Williams, Watts, MacLeod and Mathews (1988, 1997). are evaluated in light of the empiricial results. These results reveal that anxiety patients do indeed show the pre dicted attentional bias towards threatening stimuli. The bias, however, man ifests itself solely as increased distraction by these stimuli, not as fast er detection of them. Regarding an attentional bias in depressed patients, completely mixed results were found. These patients show the predicted memo ry bias for relevant stimuli in explicit memory tests, but not in implicit ones. With anxiety patients, however, a memory bias was found in implicit t ests, whereas explicit tests yielded mixed results. To date, none of the ex isting theories is able to explain this complex pattern of results. Potenti al explanations are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.