Selective recall of passages in agoraphobia

Abstract

The present experiment examined selective passage recall by agoraphobics. Two groups of subjects, agoraphobics and controls, were required to read six prose passages describing either phobia-related or neutral episodes. There were two recall conditions for all subjects; an immediate recall and a delayed, 24 hour recall. The yoked agoraphobic-control pairs were randomly assigned to one of two prime conditions, either phobic or neutral. The primes were short descriptions of the passages character, Anne. The results revealed that agoraphobics recalled significantly more propositions from phobia-related than neutral passages, compared to controls. Agoraphobics also generated significantly more implications and intrusions in relation to phobia-related passages than neutral passages, compared to controls. There was no effect for prime or delayed recall. The findings were interpreted in relation to Beck and Rush's (1975) "danger-schema" concept, mood-memory theory (Bower, 1981) and the clinical implications of the present findings were considered.