Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate information processing bias for negative stimuli associated with depression and social anxiety. Each 20 college students were screened for social anxiety and depression and control group. Students with BDI score in the higher 15%ile but SADS score in the lower 50%ile were assigned to the Depression Group and students with BDI score in the higher 15%ile but BDI score in the lower 50%ile were assigned to the Social Anxiety Group. Students with both BDI score and SADS score in the lower 50%ile constituted the Control Group. Process-dissociation procedure was used to measure the controlled and automatic processing as Jacoby(1991) had proposed. Results showed that the Depression Group showed significantly larger bias for negative words than the Control group in the controlled processing, but not in the automatic processing. In contrast, the group differences in the automatic processing bias did not reach statistical significance although the Social Anxiety Group showed the largest automatic processing bias for negative words among the three groups. The Social Anxiety Group also showed nearly the same degree of controlled processing bias for negative words. The findings were discussed in terms of its implications for symptoms of depression and social anxiety. Finally, limitations of the present study and future directions for further study were discussed.