THE IMPACT OF ANXIETY ON MEMORY FOR DETAILS IN SPIDER PHOBICS

According to the attentional narrowing account of emotional memory, ph ysiological arousal results in attention being directed towards centra l rather than peripheral characteristics of the situation. Consequentl y, memory for central details would be relatively good, whereas memory for peripheral information would be impaired. The present experiment sought to test this attentional narrowing hypothesis under highly stre ssful conditions. Spider phobics and low-fear controls were confronted with a large live spider, eliciting high levels of emotion in the pho bic group. Afterwards, subjects' memory for the experimental situation was tested. On a cued recall test, phobics displayed a poor memory fo r peripheral detail information relative to control subjects. There we re no differences between phobics and controls with respect to central detail information. Thus, the present data provide partial support fo r the attentional narrowing account of emotional memory. (C) 1997 by J ohn Wiley & Sons, Ltd.