Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Clinical Psychology Review

Autobiographical memory biases in social anxiety

Julie Morgan ⁎
Psychology Research Unit, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT1 2EE, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Individuals with social anxiety preferentially attend to threatening social information during and following
Received 8 September 2009 social events. As such, cognitive models predict that social anxiety should be associated with biases in the
Received in revised form 1 December 2009 recall of social events. However, initial experimental studies examining this assumption either failed to find
Accepted 3 December 2009
such biases or found only weak evidence for an autobiographical memory bias. The current review examines
an emerging line of evidence offering support for the role of an autobiographical memory bias in the
Keywords:
Social anxiety
development and maintenance of social anxiety. The review begins by examining current theoretical
Social phobia approaches to autobiographical memory before looking at empirical studies that have examined differences
Autobiographical memory between socially anxious and non-anxious individuals in the recall of autobiographical memories. Specific
Cognitive biases memory biases include properties of social-threat memories, the imagery associated with these memories,
and the cognitive processing styles that have been found to either facilitate or inhibit the recall of emotional
memories. Limitations in methodologies used to study retrieval of memories and the implications of findings
for future research are discussed.
© 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
2. Theories of autobiographical memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
2.1. Autobiographical memories as reconstructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
2.2. The self-memory system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
2.2.1. Memory and current self-perceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
2.2.2. Memory and self-regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
3. Autobiographical memory and anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
3.1. Autobiographical memory and social anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
3.2. Recall of social-threat memories in social anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
3.3. Properties of anxiety-related memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
3.4. Memory perspective biases and social anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
4. Early autobiographical memories and social anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
4.1. Recall of early adverse social experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
4.2. Imagery and early autobiographical memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
5. Cognitive processing styles and autobiographical memories in social anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
5.1. Effects of imagery on autobiographical memory recall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
5.2. Effects of rumination on autobiographical memory recall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
5.2.1. Anticipatory processing and memory recall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
5.2.2. Post-event processing and memory recall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
6. Directions for future research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

1. Introduction

Social anxiety disorder is characterized by a marked and persistent

⁎ Tel.: +44 20 8547 2000; fax: +44 20 8547 7292. fear of social or performance situations that provoke an immediate
E-mail address: J.Morgan@kingston.ac.uk. anxiety response (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

0272-7358/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2009.12.003
 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
Anxiety typically focuses on concerns about negative evaluation from
other people. Individuals with social anxiety disorder anticipate that
they will embarrass or humiliate themselves before entering a social
event, shift their attention towards detailed monitoring and observation
of the self during the event, and engage in rumination following the
event (Clark & McManus, 2002). Social anxiety is characterized there-
fore by a number of biases in cognitive processing (see Heinrichs &
Hofmann, 2001) that are a direct result of the social context in which
anxiety is apprehended and experienced. Given that social anxiety is
associated with enhanced attention to perceived threat in social sit-
uations, a basic assumption of cognitive models of social anxiety (Clark
& Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) postulates that individuals will
display a tendency to recall negative experiences of social events. As
such, it is expected that social anxiety will be associated with biases in
the recall of certain types of autobiographical experiences.
In comparison with the wealth of research that has focused on the
role of implicit and explicit memory biases in social anxiety (see Coles &
Heimberg, 2002; Mitte, 2008), the role of autobiographical memory
biases in social anxiety has been relatively under researched. However,
there is good reason to believe that such biases play an integral role in
the maintenance of this disorder. Clinical observation suggests that
individuals with social anxiety disorder tend to be preoccupied with
emotionally upsetting social events from the past, particularly in rela-
tion to perceived social failures (Clark & Wells, 1995; Coles & Heimberg,
2002). In addition, cognitive models of social anxiety have highlighted
the importance that memory processes may play in exacerbating anxiety.
For example, Rapee and Heimberg's (1997) cognitive-behavioral model
proposes that socially anxious individuals' perception of their social
performance is likely to be mediated by prior social experiences that are
represented either accurately or inaccurately in long term memory.
Furthermore, Clark and Wells' cognitive model argues that recently per-
ceived social failures may be added to an extensive list of past social
failures that are stored in memory, together serving to strengthen neg-
ative beliefs about social inadequacy and the threat of social situations.
Whereas autobiographical memory biases have been consistently
demonstrated in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (Moore &
Zoellner, 2007; Williams et al., 2007), research examining whether such
biases are apparent in other anxiety disorders has been more equivocal
(Burke & Mathews, 1992; Levy & Mineka, 1998; Richards & Whittaker,
1990). Indeed, preliminary research examining memory biases in social
anxiety initially failed to find differences between individuals with social
anxiety disorder and non-anxious controls in the retrieval of threat-
related autobiographical memories (Rapee, McCallum, Melville, Raven-
scroft, & Rodney, 1994), despite clinical observation and theoretical
models that would argue to the contrary. However, an emerging line of
research in this area has begun to highlight new ways of examining
autobiographical memory biases. For example, the link between early
autobiographical memories and current images of the self (Hackmann,
Clark, & McManus, 2000; Wild, Hackmann, & Clark, 2008), and the effect
of certain cognitive processing styles on the retrieval of autobiographical
memories (Morgan & Banerjee, 2008; Stopa & Jenkins, 2007) have tog-
ether highlighted the role of autobiographical memory in the develop-
ment and maintenance of social anxiety.
The current review will begin by introducing the concept of
autobiographical memory, presenting the view that memories are
reconstructed from self-knowledge, with particular reference to
Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) self-memory system. Current
ways of examining autobiographical memory in social anxiety will
then be reviewed (see Table 1), emphasizing the role that specific
cognitive processing styles may play in enhancing the accessibility of
emotionally adverse memories.
2. Theories of autobiographical memory
Tulving (1972) made an important distinction between two
systems in long term memory: the semantic and episodic memory
289
systems. The former consists of meaningful facts about the world and
contextual knowledge, while the latter consists of a record of specific
experiences. Autobiographical memory may be viewed as a particular
type of episodic memory concerned with “specific experiences and
memory for the personal facts of one's life” (Conway, 1990, p.4).
Autobiographical memories consist of complex events and contain a
high degree of self-reference and personal significance. In addition,
these memories typically feature sensory, perceptual, and reflective
information, including details about the particular time and place in
which an event was experienced (Rubin, 1996). Theoretical accounts
of autobiographical memory have focused on the way in which mem-
ories are structured and represented in long term memory.
2.1. Autobiographical memories as reconstructions
Current approaches to autobiographical memory are based on
earlier theories that proposed autobiographical memories are repre-
sented within hierarchical knowledge structures. Neisser (1986)
suggested that when individuals recall an experienced event, they do
not revive a single record of the event but revive a whole network of
memories associated with this event. This view emphasizes that auto-
biographical memory is organized into multiple levels of descriptions of
events (e.g., actors, meanings, and perceptual and temporal features).
Because these levels are nested within one another, recalling an event
involves moving between these levels. Neisser proposed that at the base
of this hierarchical structure are specific autobiographical memories. A
key assumption of this approach is that memories are reconstructed
based on what was perceived from an event rather than from what
actually happened. For this reason, it has been argued that autobio-
graphical memories are typically inaccurate and are often vague, incom-
plete, or distorted (Conway, 1990; Neisser, 1982). Both the encoding and
retrieval of autobiographical memories may be influenced by a com-
bination of bottom-up processes, in which incomplete or ambiguous
sensory information is received via the senses, and top-down processes, in
which information already stored in memory as prior knowledge in-
fluences expectations and interpretations of sensory input. What is re-
membered therefore appears to be influenced by what is already known.
The reconstructivist account has been further emphasized in more
recent approaches to autobiographical memory (Anderson & Conway,
1993; Conway, 1996; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Autobiograph-
ical memories are not viewed as discrete, holistic units in long term
memory, but rather they are temporary mental representations that
are reconstructed through levels of autobiographical knowledge stored
in an autobiographical knowledge base. According to Anderson and
Conway (1993), these temporary or transitory mental representations
are reconstructed in the context of a specific processing episode. They
suggest that the autobiographical knowledge base facilitates the re-
trieval of these memories. This base contains at least three levels of
knowledge. At the highest level of the hierarchy, lifetime periods re-
present the goals, plans, and themes of the self during particular periods.
For example, knowledge of significant relationships with others and
records of goal attainment that are characteristic of a particular period
are represented at this level. The next level is represented by general
events, which encompasses both repeated, extended events and single,
specific events. At the lowest level, event-specific knowledge contains
knowledge of the sensory-perceptual detail of specific events and highly
specific facts.
The process through which autobiographical memories, or the
three layers of the knowledge base, are retrieved has been described
in terms of cyclic retrieval patterns (Anderson & Conway, 1993;
Conway, 1996). In this way, when an internal or external cue is first
elaborated, activation travels in channels through the knowledge
base such that if a search accesses a lifetime period, activation is
subsequently channelled by cues available at this level to associated
general events and event-specific knowledge. At this stage of the
cyclic retrieval process, knowledge accessed by the cue is evaluated
290 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297

Table 1
Summary of studies examining autobiographical memory biases in social anxiety.

Study Sample Memory recall task Social induction Memory measure Main finding

Recall of social-threat memories

1. Rapee et al. (1994), Study 4 33 SAD Social and neutral cue words No Anxiety ratings No effect of SA on anxiety ratings of
21 NAC social memories
2. Wenzel et al. (2002) 16 SAD Social-threat and neutral cue words No IC affect ratings Weak effect of SA on negative affect ratings
17 NAC of social-threat memories
3. Wenzel, Werner et al. (2004) 15 SAD Positive, neutral, and social-threat No IC affect ratings No effect of SA on ratings of social-threat
17 NAC cue words memories when controlling for depression

Properties of anxious memories

1. Wenzel, Pinna et al. (2004) 99 Affective categories No IC affect ratings Panic/trauma memories recalled with more
students vivid and detailed properties than
worry/social anxiety memories
2. Erwin et al. (2006) 45 SAD Clinical interview No PDS-revised SAD group responded to stressful social
30 NAC memories with PTSD-type symptoms
3. D'Argembeau et al. (2006) 17 SAD Social and non-social events No MCQ SAD group recalled social events with
17 NAC greater self-referential information
4. McNally et al. (2001) 12 SAD Fearful and neutral memory No IC affect ratings No effect of diagnostic group on affective
32 PD content of recalled memories
13 MDD
24 NAC
5. Anderson et al. (2008) 42 SAD Adverse social memories No IC linguistic content Greater use of self-referential and anxiety
27 NAC words in memories recalled by SAD group

Memory perspective biases

1. Wells et al. (1998) 12 SAD Social and non-social event No Image perspective SAD group more likely to recall social
12 NAC events from an observer perspective
2. Wells and Papageorgiou (1999) 12 SAD Social and non-social event No Image perspective SAD and AP groups tend to recall social
12 AP events from an observer perspective
12 B/IP
12 NAC
3. Coles et al. (2001) 30 SAD Low, medium, high anxiety No MAQ, Image SAD group more likely to recall high anxiety
24 NAC social event perspective social events from an observer perspective

Recall of early adverse memories

1. Harvey et al. (2005) 55 SAD Childhood events No LHQ Greater recall of peer group difficulties from
30 PTSD childhood in SAD group
30 NAC
2. Stemberger et al. (1995) 68 SAD Clinical interview No SAHIQ-R SAD group more likely to recall a traumatic
25 NAC social conditioning event
3. Roth et al. (2002) 514 Childhood events No TQ Social anxiety and anxiety sensitivity
students associated with recall of teasing events
4. Hackmann et al. (2000) 22 SAD Memory based on self-imagery No Interview Event depicted in memory tended to
coincide with onset of disorder

Cognitive styles and memory

1. Magee and Zinbarg (2007) 35 hi-SA Negative social event Social N/A Focusing on negative memory led to larger
35 lo-SA anticipation increase in shyness than suppressing
memory in high SA group
2. Stopa and Jenkins (2007) 20 hi-SA Positive, negative, and neutral Self-imagery Retrieval latencies Participants took longer to retrieve positive
cue words memories when holding negative image in
mind during speech
3. Vassilopoulos (2008) 24 hi-SA Social event Social vignettes IC affect ratings High SA group recalled fewer positive social
22 lo-SA events than low SA group
4. Hinrichsen and Clark (2003), 20 hi-SA Social event No Interview, ASBQ High SA group reported more past
Study 1 20 lo-SA perceived social failures during social
anticipation
5. Mellings and Alden (2000) 58 hi-SA Memory of social interaction Social IC memory PEP associated with recall of negative
58 lo-SA interaction description self-related information following
interaction
6. Field and Morgan (2004) 33 hi-SA Free recall of events PEP Affective ratings High SA group recalled anxious and
33 lo-SA shameful memories following PEP
7. Morgan and Banerjee (2008), 29 hi-SA AMQ Response style Affective rating High SA group recalled memories with
Study 2 30 lo-SA highest anxiety ratings after ruminating
about a hypothetical social event

Note. SAD = social anxiety disorder; NAC = non-anxious controls; IC = independent coder; PDS-revised = post-traumatic diagnostic scale-revised; MCQ = memory characteristics
questionnaire; PD = panic disorder; MDD = major depressive disorder; AP = agoraphobia; B/IP = blood or injury phobia; MAQ = memory attributional questionnaire; LHQ =
learning history questionnaire; SAHIQ-R = social anxiety history and interview questionnaire-revised; TQ = teasing questionnaire; ASBQ = anticipatory social behaviors
questionnaire; PEP = post-event processing; AMQ = autobiographical memory questionnaire.

and is assessed by whether the knowledge is appropriate and required
or whether the retrieval process should be terminated. Consequently,
an autobiographical memory is retrieved once a stable pattern of
activation is established across the appropriate set of knowledge
layers in the autobiographical knowledge base. Anderson and Conway
(1993) maintain that central control processes modulate the retrieval
cycle (e.g., the working self, Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004). This
allows current themes and discrepancies of the self to influence
memory construction because current preoccupations of the self are
believed to be part of these central control processes.
 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
2.2. The self-memory system
The relationship between autobiographical memory and current
self-perceptions has been emphasized in more detail in Conway and
Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) self-memory system account of autobiograph-
ical memory. This model suggests that autobiographical memories are
the result of two competing demands: adaptive correspondence and
self-coherence. Conway et al. (2004) describe the former as the need
to encode a record of ongoing goal activity and experiences (i.e.,
reality) while the latter reflects the need to maintain a coherent and
stable record of the self's interaction with the world (i.e., an integrated
life story). This account still maintains that memories are transitory
mental constructions, but argues that a critical function of memory is
to track progress in the attainment of goals and therefore memories
should reflect reality to some extent.
2.2.1. Memory and current self-perceptions
The self-memory system predicts that the competing demand of
coherence enhances the availability of memories that support and
confirm current self-perceptions. This idea may help to explain why
individuals with social anxiety disorder are preoccupied with
perceived social failures from the past. These memories should be
highly salient to socially anxious individuals because they reconfirm
current self-views about the ability to interact effectively within
interpersonal and social performance situations. In fact, recent
research has shown that individuals with social anxiety disorder
recall and rate autobiographical experiences of social situations with
greater self-conscious emotion (Anderson, Goldin, Kurita, & Gross,
2008) and greater self-referential information (D'Argembeau, Van der
Linden, d'Acremont, & Mayers, 2006) than non-anxious controls. A
similar pattern of findings has been shown in studies from other types
of anxiety disorders. For example, individuals with post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) report more trauma-related memories than
individuals without PTSD (Kangas, Henry, & Bryant, 2005; McNally,
Lasko, Macklin, & Pitman, 1995). In addition, Sutherland and Bryant
(2008) found that perceiving a discrepancy between one's current self
and ideal self is related to the recall of traumatic memories. Current
views of the self therefore appear to influence the type of memories
recalled. The effect of current self-view on the recall of past events has
been further emphasized in studies examining self-appraisal theory
(Ross & Wilson, 2002; Wilson & Ross, 2001). These studies
demonstrate a distancing bias in which individuals with high self-
esteem report feeling subjectively further away from unfavorable past
experiences than from favorable ones, whereas individuals with low
self-esteem do not show any such bias. Ross and Wilson argue that
such individuals are motivated to maintain high levels of self regard
through subjectively distancing themselves from unflattering experi-
ences, suggesting that autobiographical memory plays an important
role in regulating self-views.
2.2.2. Memory and self-regulation
In further describing the types of memories which may be
retrieved through the balance of adaptive correspondence and self-
coherence, Conway et al. (2004) define a special class of autobio-
graphical memories called self-defining memories which can be
distinguished on the basis of their distinct attributes. These memories
are often highly vivid and have intense affective qualities. They are
subject to high levels of rehearsal and are connected often to enduring
concerns or ongoing conflicts (Singer & Blagov, 2004; Sutin & Robins,
2005). For example, Sutherland and Bryant (2005) found that
individuals with PTSD are more likely to report their trauma as a
self-defining memory. It has been found that the affective quality of
self-defining memories is a function of the relevance of these
memories to the attainment of an individual's most desired goals
(Moffitt & Singer, 1994). This finding is consistent with goal-based
models of self-regulation that suggest assessment of progress in goal
291
attainment often results in intense affective experiences (Carver &
Scheier, 1998). Research suggests that self-defining memories play an
important role in regulating mood states. For example, non-depressed
individuals tend to employ positive self-defining memories to repair
their negative mood, whereas mildly depressed individuals are less
likely to employ positive memories when in a negative mood state
(Josephson, Singer, & Salovey, 1996). Certain types of autobiograph-
ical memories may therefore play an important role in self-regulation.
In terms of anxiety, it is likely that emotional memories (e.g., anxious
memories) are more accessible to anxious individuals, and may
inhibit the effective regulation of anxious mood.
3. Autobiographical memory and anxiety
Autobiographical memory in anxiety disorders has typically been
investigated in two ways: 1) studies of overgeneral memory have
found that the tendency to recall overgeneral memories coupled with
reduced ability to access specific memories is associated with PTSD
(McNally, Litz, Prassas, Shin, & Weathers, 1994; McNally et al., 1995),
and 2) studies have examined whether anxiety is associated with a
retrieval bias for anxiety-related personal memories. In support of
this, Richards and Whittaker (1990) found that following a mood
induction task to increase anxiety, individuals with high trait anxiety
were faster to recall specific personal memories in response to
anxiety-related cue words than happiness-related words. Memories
recalled by individuals with low trait anxiety were unaffected by the
type of cue word. Similarly, Burke and Mathews (1992) found that in
comparison to non-anxious controls, individuals with generalized
anxiety recalled more autobiographical memories associated with
nervousness and were quicker to recall memories associated with
anxiety in response to neutral cue words. Certain types of memories
therefore appear to be particularly salient to anxious individuals and
may be more frequently rehearsed. Indeed, research has shown that
stressful memories are associated with more emotional intensity and
more frequent retrieval (Rubin, Boals, & Berntsen, 2008). Accessibility
of anxious memories in individuals with high trait levels of anxiety
may therefore be particularly enhanced, making them more readily
available for retrieval from autobiographical memory.
3.1. Autobiographical memory and social anxiety
It has been well established that individuals with social anxiety
preferentially attend to threatening social information (Gilboa-
Schechtman, Foa, & Amir, 1999; Musa, Lépine, Clark, Mansell &
Ehlers, 2003; Veljaca & Rapee, 1998). Rapee and Heimberg (1997)
argue that socially anxious individuals examine their internal and
external environment for signs of negative evaluation, detect such
signs rapidly, and have difficulty disengaging attention from these
signs. Given that socially anxious individuals tend to closely monitor
threat and focus their attentional resources on perceived threat
during social experiences, several researchers have reasoned that
social anxiety should be associated with biases in the recall of social
events. Several lines of research have examined this view in terms of:
1) whether social anxiety is associated with greater recall of social-
threat memories, 2) whether the properties of anxiety-related
memories differ from more neutrally valenced memories, and 3)
whether the perspective from which social memories are recalled
differs between socially anxious and non-anxious individuals.
3.2. Recall of social-threat memories in social anxiety
Several studies have used an autobiographical memory cueing
procedure to examine the recall of social-threat memories in social
anxiety. These studies are based on the assumption that the emotion
or situation specified by a cue word should activate an associated
memory.
292 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
In one of the first studies to examine autobiographical recall biases
for threatening social events, Rapee et al. (1994) instructed individuals
with social anxiety disorder and non-anxious controls to describe the
first memory which came to mind following the presentation of words
relating to social situations (e.g., interview, party) and neutral words
(e.g., river, dog). They assigned participants to either a “self” condition,
in which memories from their own lives were described, or an “other”
condition, in which memories involving another person (e.g., a sibling or
close friend) were described. The groups then rated their memories on a
measure of how much anxiety was associated with each memory.
Although memories recalled from the social words were rated with
greater anxiety than memories recalled from neutral words, the results
indicated no differences between the socially anxious and non-anxious
groups in the retrieval of these memories.
Further studies examining whether individuals with social anxiety
recall a greater proportion of social-threat memories found mixed
results. Wenzel, Jackson, and Holt (2002) asked individuals with social
anxiety disorder and non-anxious controls to record specific personal
memories in response to social-threat and neutral cue words.
Independent coders rated the memories for positive or negative
affective tone. There were no differences between the groups in the
percentage of specific memories retrieved overall. However, the socially
anxious group did recall a greater percentage of memories subsequently
rated as reflecting negative affect than the non-anxious group when
cued by social-threat words. It should be noted that the memories
reflecting negative affect cued by social-threat words were made by
only 8% of the socially anxious group. Thus, the findings from the study
provide only weak evidence for an autobiographical memory bias in
social anxiety. A similar procedure using positive, social-threat, and
neutral cue words was used to measure retrieval latencies and affective
tone in autobiographical memories recalled by individuals with and
without social anxiety disorder (Wenzel, Werner, Cochran & Holt,
2004). The study found that social anxiety did not influence either the
time it took to recall threat-related memories or the affective content of
these memories when accounting for levels of depression.
Evidence from studies using memory cueing procedures suggest that
at best there is only weak evidence to support the view that social anxiety
is characterized by biases in autobiographical memory. These findings
contradict cognitive models of social anxiety (e.g., Clark & Wells, 1995;
Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) that would predict greater recall of social-threat
memories in socially anxious individuals. However, there are several
limitations in using cue words to elicit social-threat memories in socially
anxious individuals. For example, Holmes, Mathews, Mackintosh, and
Dalgleish (2008) have shown that mental imagery is more effective in
eliciting emotion than verbal processing of the same material. Further-
more, Holmes et al. found that imagery descriptions are more likely to
resemble personal memories than sentence descriptions. Imagery (e.g.,
use of pictures) may therefore provide a more effective route to accessing
emotional autobiographical memories than cue words. In addition, Clark
and Wells' model suggests that individuals with social anxiety will tend to
dwell on memories of social-threat when either anticipating a social event
(i.e., worrying about how they will come across to others) or when
ruminating about a recent social interaction (i.e., worrying about how
they did come across). As such, it could be argued that experiments
exploring retrieval biases for negative information should include a social-
threat manipulation to activate the dysfunctional assumptions or self-
schemas that characterize social anxiety disorder (Hirsch & Clark, 2004).
Activating a state level of social anxiety (e.g., by requiring participants to
engage in an anxiety-provoking social task) before presenting cue words
would ensure that memory biases are examined under conditions that re-
semble the way information is processed in threatening social situations.
3.3. Properties of anxiety-related memories
Autobiographical memories incorporate detailed descriptions of
memorable events and experiences. Recent research in social anxiety
has therefore begun to examine properties of these memories, par-
ticularly those concerned with anxiety-related experiences. This re-
search has questioned whether anxious memories differ qualitatively
from other, more emotionally neutral events and experiences.
Wenzel, Pinna and Rubin (2004) have argued that autobiographical
memories of anxiety-related experiences and the verbal descriptions,
mental imagery, and emotional content associated with these memories
may help to explain why they could be more accessible to anxious
individuals. In a study that looked at the properties of different types
of anxiety-related autobiographical memories, Wenzel et al. asked un-
dergraduate students to retrieve three specific memories to each
of five categories reflecting panic, trauma, worry, social anxiety, and
contentment. They were then asked questions about the properties of
these memories (e.g., vividness, accuracy, and sensory and emotional
experiences). Wenzel et al. found that the panic- and trauma-related
memories retrieved by students tended to be more vivid, were ac-
companied by intense negative emotions, and were more likely to be
perceived as reflecting an accurate portrayal of the event than the other
memory categories. This suggests that panic or trauma autobiographical
memories may have more vivid and detailed properties than memories
associated with worry or social anxiety. However, there may be im-
portant differences between anxious memories recalled by normal
populations and those recalled by clinical groups. Indeed, recent re-
search shows that memories of stressful social events recalled by
individuals with social anxiety disorder are in fact re-experienced with
the type of trauma symptoms that characterize PTSD. Erwin, Heimberg,
Marx, and Franklin (2006) found that unlike non-anxious controls,
individuals with social anxiety disorder reacted to their memories
of past socially stressful events with PTSD-type symptoms such as
hyperarousal and avoidance.
Properties of memories for social events recalled by socially anxious
individuals have been further examined by D'Argembeau et al. (2006).
They asked individuals with social anxiety disorder and non-anxious
controls to recall recent social and non-social events associated with
positive and negative emotion. Ratings of phenomenal characteristics
associated with these memories revealed a bias towards recalling social
events with greater self-referential information (i.e., memory for one's
own behavior and what one thought and said) but less sensory
information (i.e., memory for visual and auditory details) in the socially
anxious group. There were no differences between the groups in
phenomenal characteristics for non-social events.
Using ratings made by independent coders, McNally, Otto, and
Hornig (2001) found no evidence to distinguish the properties of fear-
related memories recalled by anxious individuals from those recalled by
non-anxious controls. They asked individuals with panic disorder, social
anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and non-anxious controls
to describe their most frightening experience (i.e., a fearful memory)
and what they had for breakfast that morning (i.e., a neutral memory).
Responses were audiotaped and the speech was content-filtered to
eliminate high frequencies while leaving paralinguistic features such
as pitch and loudness intact. This technique removes semantic content
in the speech but the resulting sound can be analysed for emotional
content. Independent coders rated the content-filtered speech on
several emotional dimensions to assess whether the fear memories
reported by the anxiety and depression groups were emotionally
distinguishable from neutral memories and the memories reported by
the control group. However, they did not find evidence to support this
hypothesis. Regardless of the diagnostic status of the individuals, the
content-filtered fear memories were rated as more anxious, arousing,
and dominating than the neutral memories.
In a further study in which independent coders analysed the lin-
guistic content of autobiographical narratives, Anderson et al. (2008)
did find differences in the properties of social memories recalled by
individuals with social anxiety disorder and non-anxious controls.
Participants were asked to recall autobiographical situations charac-
terized by vivid social humiliation, embarrassment, or shame. In line
 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
with D'Argembeau et al.'s (2006) findings, the narratives written by
the socially anxious group contained greater self-referential informa-
tion and greater use of words reflecting anxiety symptoms than the
narratives written by non-anxious controls. Importantly, Anderson et
al. further found that the socially anxious group reported greater
current self-conscious emotions when recalling social situations.
Taken together, the findings from Anderson et al. and Erwin et al.
(2006) suggest that the recall of past social encounters in social
anxiety can impact on emotions currently being experienced and may
disrupt the processing of past social events.
Overall, studies examining properties of anxiety-provoking mem-
ories that found support for an autobiographical memory bias in social
anxiety tended to examine characteristics of memory other than, or in
addition to, affective valence. Although models of anxiety (e.g., Beck,
Emery, & Greenberg, 1985) would predict that anxiety-provoking
memories should be associated with specific types of emotion, it is
important to note that the emotions associated with autobiographical
memories are likely to be multilayered across specific events and
lifetime periods and may not always fall into discrete emotional
categories. As shown in Table 1, studies examining autobiographical
memory biases in social anxiety commonly measure the affective
content of memories. Although this provides a useful measure of the
emotion associated with the memory, it limits the conclusions that
can be drawn regarding further characteristics of the memory (e.g.,
vividness, sensory detail, visual perspective, age of memory). As
studies such as Anderson et al.'s (2008) show, using a qualitative
approach such as content analysis to systematically categorise and
classify properties of social memories is a potentially important and
interesting methodological procedure for future work in this area.
3.4. Memory perspective biases and social anxiety
There is evidence to suggest that social anxiety may be associated
with a memory perspective bias. It has been proposed that individuals
with social anxiety disorder should demonstrate a marked tendency
to recall social situations from an observer perspective due to detailed
observation and monitoring of the self during anxiety-provoking
social situations (Wells, Clark, & Ahmad, 1998). In an observer
perspective memory, individuals concentrate on viewing themselves
as if they were observing the situation. Hence, a socially anxious
individual may concentrate on how he/she appears to others in the
memory of an anxious social event. This type of perspective is
typically contrasted with a field perspective image in which the
individual looks out at the situation from their own eyes. Several
studies have shown that socially anxious individuals have a greater
tendency to report social situations from an observer perspective
(Wells et al., 1998). For example, Wells and Papageorgiou (1999)
asked participants to recall an anxiety-provoking social event and a
non-anxiety-provoking, non-social event. Using a bipolar rating,
participants indicated the extent to which the image in each memory
was viewed from an observer or field perspective. They found that
individuals with a diagnosis of social phobia or agoraphobia were
more likely to report viewing the image in the social event from an
observer perspective than individuals with blood/injury phobia or
non-patients. This suggests that recalling anxious social memories
from an observer perspective may be specific to individuals with
greater social-evaluative concerns. Further research has shown that
the use of observer perspective imagery is associated with more
frequent negative thoughts, more safety behaviors, and worse self-
evaluation of social performance (Spurr & Stopa, 2003). In addition,
D'Argembeau et al. (2006) found an observer perspective bias for
social events recalled by individuals with social anxiety disorder, but
not for non-anxious controls.
These findings are supported by research which has shown that
the level of anxiety associated with a social encounter influences
whether the event is recalled from an observer or field perspective.
293
Coles, Turk, Heimberg, and Fresco (2001) found that individuals with
social anxiety disorder tended to recall social events, which they had
rated as highly anxiety-provoking, from an observer perspective. In
comparison, events rated as low in anxiety were more likely to be
recalled from a field perspective. This suggests that socially anxious
individuals do not simply recall all social situations from an observer
perspective but that a memory perspective bias may play a role in
social events that are perceived as greatly threatening.
Research into memory perspective biases suggests that the way a
social event is recalled is important for understanding how memory
biases maintain social anxiety. The research findings are consistent
with the view that during social situations, individuals with social
anxiety have heightened self-focused attention (see Spurr & Stopa,
2002). It seems reasonable to assume that excessive self-monitoring
during a social event leads to the encoding and retrieval of an observer
perspective memory. However, it should be noted that a discrepancy
exists in the social anxiety literature: Clark and Wells' (1995) model
argues that socially anxious individuals monitor internal (i.e.,
negative cognitions) threat cues during social events, while Rapee
and Heimberg's (1997) model also emphasizes the role of external
threat cues such as the social-evaluative behaviors of interaction
partners (see Schultz & Heimberg, 2008). As such, further research is
needed to examine more directly how and whether focus of attention
during a social event affects the way that event is later recalled by
socially anxious individuals.
4. Early autobiographical memories and social anxiety
Development of social anxiety disorder has been associated with a
broad range of environmental influences (Bögels, van Oosten, Muris,
& Smulders, 2001), individual response factors (Harvey, Ehlers, &
Clark, 2005), and genetic factors (Kendler, Karkowski, & Prescott,
1999). In particular, problems with peer group relations have been
shown to coincide with the onset of social fears (La Greca & Lopez,
1998). Harvey et al. (2005) found that when recalling social situations
prior to the onset of the disorder, not fitting in with a peer group was
indicated as one of the most common events to concur with the
development of social anxiety. In addition, retrospective studies have
shown that socially anxious adults recall more childhood inhibition,
particularly in childhood social and school situations, than adults with
generalized anxiety (Mick & Telch, 1998; Neal, Edelmann, & Glachan,
2002). Memory for these adverse social experiences suggests that
such experiences may play an important role in the initial develop-
ment of the disorder. Indeed, Clark and Wells' (1995) model predicts
that the cognitive processing biases that characterize social anxiety
develop as a consequence of early adverse social experiences. In
addition, the recall of such experiences may be implicated in the
maintenance of the disorder. Approaches to studying the impact of
these early memories in social anxiety have focused on whether these
memories indicate a role for traumatic conditioning experiences and
whether there is a link between early memories and current self-
imagery in social anxiety.
4.1. Recall of early adverse social experiences
The recall of adverse social memories from earlier in the
individual's life may indicate that social fears in social anxiety
disorder develop in response to a specific conditioning episode of a
traumatic social experience. Although negative life-events generally
precipitate phobia onset (Magee, 1999; Öst & Hugdahl, 1981),
Rachman (2002) states that social fears develop gradually and cannot
be linked to specific conditioning experiences. Contrary to this,
Stemberger, Turner, Beidel, and Calhoun (1995) found that 56% of a
sample with specific social phobia and 40% of a sample with
generalized social phobia were able to recall a traumatic conditioning
294 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
episode involving an uncomfortable social situation that marked the
start of their social fears.
Distinguishing between specific types of life experiences that are
more likely to be drawn upon by socially anxious individuals may be
an important direction for future research. Initial research in this area
suggests that the recall of memories related to teasing during
childhood is associated with social anxiety and anxiety sensitivity in
adulthood (Roth, Coles, & Heimberg, 2002). The retrospective nature
of these studies limits the conclusions that can be drawn. In particular,
it is difficult to ascertain whether Roth et al.'s study indicates that
teasing actually led to the development of high trait levels of social
anxiety, or whether the individual's current self-view intensifies or
distorts the adversity of the event recalled. However, the studies
suggest that socially anxious individuals may be more likely to draw
upon these adverse childhood experiences in adulthood. This may
have important implications for the maintenance of the disorder;
particularly given that such memories may prevent an individual from
updating their current self-view.
4.2. Imagery and early autobiographical memories
During social situations individuals with social anxiety direct their
attention inwardly towards monitoring internal bodily sensations,
negative images of the self, and negative thoughts concerning the
social situation (see Spurr & Stopa, 2002). This internal self-
monitoring is often referred to as self-focused attention and has been
theorized to play an important role in heightening the anxious
response during social events. Cognitive models of social anxiety
predict that this increase in self-focused attention should lead
individuals to make erroneous inferences regarding how they believe
they appear to others during a social situation (Clark & Wells, 1995).
In line with this, recent studies in social anxiety have shown that such
erroneous inferences are a result of negative self-imagery during
social interactions (Hirsch, Clark, Mathews, & Williams, 2003; Hirsch,
Meynen, & Clark, 2004).
Distorted images of the self appear to support negative beliefs
about the way the individual sees themselves in social situations.
However, an emerging line of research further suggests that these
negative self-images may actually be based upon adverse social
experiences from earlier in the individual's life. Using an interview
procedure, Hackmann et al. (2000) asked 22 patients with social
anxiety disorder to bring to mind the recurrent images they
frequently experience during anxiety-provoking social situations.
The patients were subsequently asked whether they could recall a
particular memory which was closely linked to the recurrent image.
The majority of patients (96%) reported a specific memory of an
adverse social event that was closely linked to the recurrent image in
terms of both sensory detail (e.g., bodily sensations and perceptions)
and interpersonal content. For 41% of the patients, the event recalled
had happened in the same year as the onset of the disorder. For 81% of
the patients, the recalled event had happened no more than a year
following onset of the disorder. It therefore appears that the self-
images drawn upon by socially anxious individuals contain essences
of adverse social events from the past. This proposal is further
supported by recent studies that highlight the benefits of adapting
treatment techniques such as imagery rescripting (see Holmes, Arntz,
& Smucker, 2007) to directly modify early memories that are linked to
these images. Through identifying memories associated with recur-
rent images and then using cognitive restructuring to update the
meaning of these memories, Wild, Hackmann, and Clark (2007, 2008)
have shown that imagery techniques can be used by patients with
social anxiety disorder to link new meanings to distressing social
memories. Wild et al. (2008) found that updating memories in this
way significantly reduced the distress and vividness associated with
the memories and led to improvements in more general maladaptive
thoughts and beliefs associated with social anxiety.
5. Cognitive processing styles and autobiographical memories in
social anxiety
The research reviewed thus far suggests that certain types of
emotional autobiographical memories may be more accessible to
socially anxious individuals. However, it is likely that there are certain
circumstances under which these memories are more likely to be
recalled and under which such memories exert stronger emotional
responses. For example, Magee and Zinbarg (2007) examined how the
type of cognitive processing style used in response to emotional social
memories could affect levels of state anxiety in socially anxious
individuals. They found that when high socially anxious individuals
recalled and focused on a negative memory of a social interaction,
they experienced larger increases in self-reported shyness than when
instructed to suppress the memory. The same pattern was not evident
in low socially anxious individuals. Examining the relationship
between information processing styles and autobiographical memo-
ries may therefore provide further insight into how such cognitive
processes interact and how certain cognitive styles may influence the
types of memories recalled in social anxiety.
5.1. Effects of imagery on autobiographical memory recall
Self-imagery may exert an important influence on memory
accessibility in social anxiety. As described above, current distorted
images of the self appear to be based on memories of negative social
experiences (Hackmann et al., 2000). A recent study has shown
additionally that self-imagery may actually affect the type of
autobiographical memories recalled by socially anxious individuals.
Stopa and Jenkins (2007) investigated whether the valence of an
image held in mind by high socially anxious individuals during a
speech would affect the types of autobiographical memories retrieved
in response to positive, negative, and neutral cue words. When
holding a negative image in mind, participants spent longer retrieving
positive than negative memories. However, there was no difference in
retrieval latencies between negative and neutral memories, suggest-
ing that negative imagery suppresses the retrieval of more positively
valenced memories. Although the study did not employ a comparison
group of low socially anxious individuals, these initial findings suggest
that negative self-imagery may have inhibitory effects on the retrieval
of autobiographical memories in social anxiety.
Further research has shown that imagery for social events may affect
the recall of social memories. Vassilopoulos (2008) asked high and low
socially anxious individuals to imagine future anxiety-provoking events
using vignettes of social scenarios. Participants then recorded their
thoughts about the scenarios and were asked to describe a memory of a
similar social event that came to mind after reading each vignette.
Although there was no difference between the high and low social
anxiety groups in the number of negative and neutral memories
recalled, the high social anxiety group did recall less positive events
from the past. Interestingly, Vassilopoulos suggests this is due to a self-
enhancing process in low socially anxious individuals, which is not
engaged in by the high socially anxious individuals.
5.2. Effects of rumination on autobiographical memory recall
Clark and Wells' (1995) cognitive model suggests two stages in the
anxiety response when socially anxious individuals may be particu-
larly vulnerable to dwelling on adverse memories: before entering a
social interaction and after leaving a social event. Clark and Wells refer
to these stages as anticipatory processing and post-event processing,
respectively.
5.2.1. Anticipatory processing and memory recall
During anticipatory processing, individuals engage in a pre-
mortem of the social event in which they may review the possible
 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
outcomes of the social event in detail. Clark and Wells (1995) propose
that this pre-mortem may be dominated by recollections of past
failures, negative images of the self, and predictions of poor
performance and rejection in future social events. In line with this,
Hinrichsen and Clark (2003) have shown that in anticipation of an
anxiety-provoking social event, high socially anxious individuals
report experiencing more negative bodily sensations, are more likely
to catastrophize on what might happen during the event, dwell on
ways of avoiding or leaving the social event, and are more likely to
recall past perceived social failures than low socially anxious
individuals. However, this research was based on self-report and the
recall of specific events was not further assessed (e.g., for specific
properties of the memories). Further research is therefore needed to
specify the processes involved in the recall of past events during
anticipation. Interestingly, Mellings and Alden (2000) found no
support for the notion that social anticipation enhances access to
negative information about previous social events. However, they did
find that ruminative thinking following a social interaction predicted
recall of negative self-related information. This tentatively suggests
that recalling negative social cues and past perceived social failures
may be associated with cognitive processes which follow a social
event rather than those which characterize the anticipation of the
event.
5.2.2. Post-event processing and memory recall
After leaving an anxiety-provoking social event, socially anxious
individuals engage in ruminative thought about the preceding social
event (Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rachman, Grüter-Andrew, & Shafran,
2000) and show a bias for the recall of anxiety-related behavior
(Edwards, Rapee, & Franklin, 2003). It has been further suggested that
such tendency to engage in rumination may occur in interaction with
memories of past social performance (Abbott & Rapee, 2004; Clark &
Wells, 1995). Although the influence of rumination on memory recall
has been more readily associated with mood-congruency studies
(McFarland & Buehler, 1998) and research in depression (Lyubo-
mirsky, Caldwell, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998), recent research suggests
that ruminative responses, particularly following an ambiguous social
event, may lead to a bias in memory recall in social anxiety. Field and
Morgan (2004) asked high and low socially anxious individuals to
describe a recent personal social interaction which they felt had been
ambiguous (i.e., uncertain about whether the social interaction had
gone well). Participants then either focused on negative aspects of the
interaction (i.e., negative post-event processing), positive aspects of
the interaction (i.e., positive post-event processing), or engaged in a
distraction task. Following this, participants engaged in free recall of
memories of personal events and experiences. These memories were
subsequently rated along three dimensions of negativity, anxiety, and
shame. Field and Morgan found that regardless of the type of post-
event processing engaged in, high socially anxious individuals
recalled memories rated as more negative and shameful than low
socially anxious individuals. This study suggests that post-event
processing may therefore lead to a bias in the retrieval of past events
and experiences in social anxiety.
Morgan and Banerjee (2008) have further demonstrated that the
style of post-event processing engaged in by socially anxious
individuals can affect subsequent recall of memories. Based on
previous theoretical work (Treynor, Gonzalez, & Nolen-Hoeksema,
2003), Morgan and Banerjee distinguished between two types of
response style: a ruminative response style characterized by a
tendency to dwell passively and repetitively on the causes and
consequences of negative feelings, and a reflective response style
characterized by an openness to acknowledging and accepting
negative thoughts and feelings. They found that compared to low
socially anxious individuals, high socially anxious individuals who
engaged in a ruminative response style following an imagined social
event were more likely to recall anxious memories than after
295
engaging in a reflective response style. Engaging in a ruminative
response style therefore appears to enhance the accessibility of
certain types of emotional memories for high but not low socially
anxious individuals. It could be argued that this type of elaborative
thinking reconfirms and strengthens existing dysfunctional assump-
tions people with social anxiety hold about themselves (e.g.,
assumptions about the ability to make a positive impression on
others), therefore increasing the likelihood of retrieving memories
associated with anxious emotion.
6. Directions for future research
Research findings reviewed above suggest that high socially
anxious individuals do experience enhanced memory for threatening
and highly emotional autobiographical material. Furthermore, it
appears that memories which are highly representative of current
self-perceptions tend to be more accessible to individuals with social
anxiety. Several lines of enquiry are important for future research
studies in this area. First, researchers should consider the value of
further examining whether the negative impact of certain types of
memories maintains and exacerbates social anxiety. Second, given
that certain cognitive processing styles may be particularly influential
in maintaining social anxiety, future research examining the role of
these response styles in memory processes should be considered.
Current research emphasizes the importance of examining memory
for life-events in individuals with high social anxiety. While it is unclear
whether certain life-events have a greater negative impact for high
socially anxious individuals, research suggests that memory for events
occurring around the onset of social anxiety may be particularly in-
fluential in the formation of current images of the self (Hackmann et al.,
2000; Wild et al., 2008). Accumulation of socially stressful life-events
may therefore contribute to the emergence and maintenance of social
anxiety. Future research should focus on examining whether high
socially anxious individuals display a bias for recalling memories which
reflect enduring concerns and ongoing conflicts (e.g., self-defining
memories, Conway et al., 2004) and the role such memories play in
maintaining dysfunctional beliefs about the self. Following research in
self-appraisal theory (Ross & Wilson, 2002), it is possible that in-
dividuals with social anxiety will perceive certain social memories as
subjectively closer in time because they repeatedly draw upon these
memories when forming negative images of the self.
Research reviewed suggests that biases in autobiographical
memory are a central feature of social anxiety, however, it has not
always been clear how to study the way in which adverse memories
are actively involved in maintaining social anxiety. Initial research
exploring the recall of social-threat memories in individuals with
social anxiety – memories which are theoretically assumed to be
associated with intense emotion for these individuals – generally
either failed to find differences between high and low social anxiety
groups or found only weak evidence for the presence of memory
biases (Rapee et al., 1994; Wenzel et al., 2002; Wenzel, Pinna et al.,
2004; Wenzel, Werner et al., 2004). It is likely that the way a socially-
threatening event is encoded into memory will affect the strength of
recollection for that event. For example, Rubin (2005) states that
while in clinical disorders such as PTSD and panic disorder a highly
negative event has actually occurred and the event itself is therefore
strongly encoded in memory, in social anxiety disorder a highly
negative event tends to be anticipated but the event itself may not
always be socially stressful and therefore a threatening memory is not
encoded. The research reviewed shows that there are a range of
factors affecting the recall of anxiety-provoking memories in social
anxiety, and it is likely that certain stages in the anxiety response may
differentially affect the encoding of these memories. Future research
should focus on comparing memory for the anticipation of a social
event, memory for the event itself, and memory for post-event pro-
cesses to examine how vivid, detailed, and emotional these memories
296 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
are. This would further test the view that there are certain stages in
the social anxiety response when autobiographical memory processes
are more influential in maintaining dysfunctional beliefs about the
self.
Cognitive models (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997)
state that the experience of social anxiety is dependent on the activation
of specific information processing biases and a negative self-schema.
Following from this, individuals with social anxiety should be more
likely to demonstrate memory biases when such schemas are activated
and when engaged in specific types of cognitive processing. On this
basis, it seems important that studies should employ a social-evaluative
task either before or during the retrieval of autobiographical memories.
Research that has examined the effect of cognitive processing styles on
autobiographical memory (e.g., imagery and rumination) has shown
that these processing styles can either facilitate the retrieval of
memories with certain affective qualities (Morgan & Banerjee, 2008)
or inhibit the retrieval of these memories (Stopa & Jenkins, 2007).
Further research into the facilitation and inhibition of autobiographical
memories in social anxiety will be important for understanding the role
of these memory processes in the maintenance of this disorder.
Research that has examined the effect of cognitive processing
styles on memory recall has to date been carried out on analogue
samples of high and low socially anxious individuals as determined by
scores on various social anxiety measures. It is generally argued that
anxiety disorders can be conceptualized on a continuum between low
and high levels of anxiety rather than as discrete “all or none” cate-
gories (Vriends, Becker, Meyer, Michael, & Margraf, 2007). Therefore,
research carried out with high socially anxious samples of non-clinical
groups provides a good exploratory framework for determining
whether certain information processing biases are more likely to be
evident in individuals with clinical disorders. However, until research
is carried out to confirm the presence of these memory biases in
clinical groups, the generalization of the results from these studies to
clinically referred individuals with social anxiety disorder remains
open to question.
In conclusion, several lines of evidence suggest that social anxiety
may be characterized by biases in autobiographical memory recall.
Such biases include: 1) recall of social memories with properties
relating to self-referential information, 2) an imagery bias such that
socially anxious individuals recall memories of anxiety-provoking
social events from an observer perspective and base current images of
the self on memories of early adverse social experiences, and 3) a bias
in the types of memories recalled when engaged in specific styles of
cognitive processing. The research findings reviewed have important
implications for the treatment of social anxiety disorder. As discussed
above, rescripting distressing social memories can improve the
symptoms of social anxiety and can lead to significant changes in
social cognitions (Wild et al., 2008). Further research in social anxiety
should clarify which particular properties of social memories are
important to restructure in memory rescripting to lessen the distress
associated with these memories. In addition, recent research has
highlighted the benefits of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for
individuals with social anxiety disorder (Kocovski, Fleming, & Rector,
2009) and for reducing ruminative tendencies (Teasdale et al., 2000).
It is possible that this treatment approach could lessen the impact of
certain cognitive processing styles such as rumination on the recall of
adverse autobiographical memories. Further research should there-
fore consider whether such interventions can be used to regulate the
retrieval of adverse social memories in social anxiety.
References
Abbott, M. J., & Rapee, R. M. (2004). Post-event rumination and negative self-appraisal
in social phobia before and after treatment. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 113,
136−144.
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders, 4th edition Washington DC: APA.
Anderson, S. J., & Conway, M. A. (1993). Investigating the structure of autobiographical
memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 19,
1178−1196.
Anderson, B., Goldin, P. R., Kurita, K., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Self-representation in social
anxiety disorder: Linguistic analysis of autobiographical narratives. Behaviour
Research and Therapy, 46, 1119−1125.
Beck, A. T., Emery, G., & Greenberg, R. (1985). Anxiety disorders and phobias: A cognitive
perspective. New York: Basic Books.
Bögels, S. M., van Oosten, A., Muris, P., & Smulders, D. (2001). Familial correlates of social
anxiety in children and adolescents. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39, 273−287.
Burke, M., & Mathews, A. (1992). Autobiographical memory and clinical anxiety. Cog-
nition and Emotion, 6, 23−35.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Clark, D. M., & McManus, F. (2002). Information processing in social phobia. Biological
Psychiatry, 51, 92−100.
Clark, D. M., & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In R. G. Heimberg, M.
Liebowitz, D. A. Hope, & F. R. Schneier (Eds.), Social phobia: Diagnosis, assessment,
and treatment (pp. 69−92). New York: Guilford Press.
Coles, M. E., & Heimberg, R. G. (2002). Memory biases in the anxiety disorders. Clinical
Psychology Review, 22, 587−627.
Coles, M. E., Turk, C. L., Heimberg, R. G., & Fresco, D. M. (2001). Effects of varying levels
of anxiety within social situations: Relationship to memory perspective and
attributions in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39, 651−665.
Conway, M. A. (1990). Autobiographical memory: An introduction. Milton Keynes: Open
University Press.
Conway, M. A. (1996). Autobiographical knowledge and autobiographical memories.
In D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Remembering our past: Studies in autobiographical memory
(pp. 67−93). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Conway, M. A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical
memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107, 261−288.
Conway, M. A., Singer, J. A., & Tagini, A. (2004). The self and autobiographical memory:
Correspondence and coherence. Social Cognition, 22, 491−529.
D'Argembeau, A., Van der Linden, M., d'Acremont, M., & Mayers, I. (2006). Phenomenal
characteristics of autobiographical memories for social and non-social events in
social phobia. Memory, 14, 637−647.
Edwards, S. L., Rapee, R. M., & Franklin, J. (2003). Post-event rumination and recall bias
for a social performance event in high and low socially anxious individuals. Cog-
nitive Therapy and Research, 27, 603−617.
Erwin, B. A., Heimberg, R. G., Marx, B. P., & Franklin, M. E. (2006). Traumatic and socially
stressful life events among persons with social anxiety disorder. Journal of Anxiety
Disorders, 20, 896−914.
Field, A. P., & Morgan, J. (2004). Post-event processing and the retrieval of
autobiographical memories in socially anxious individuals. Journal of Anxiety
Disorders, 18, 647−663.
Gilboa-Schechtman, E., Foa, E. B., & Amir, N. (1999). Attentional biases for facial
expressions in social phobia: The effects of target and distractor in “face-in-the-
crowd” task. Cognition & Emotion, 13, 305−318.
Hackmann, A., Clark, D. M., & McManus, F. (2000). Recurrent images and early
memories in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 601−610.
Harvey, A. G., Ehlers, A., & Clark, D. M. (2005). Learning history in social phobia.
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 33, 257−271.
Heinrichs, N., & Hofmann, S. G. (2001). Information processing in social phobia: A
critical review. Clinical Psychology Review, 21, 741−770.
Hinrichsen, H., & Clark, D. M. (2003). Anticipatory processing in social anxiety: Two
pilot studies. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 34, 205−218.
Hirsch, C. R., & Clark, D. M. (2004). Information-processing bias in social phobia. Clinical
Psychology Review, 24, 799−825.
Hirsch, C. R., Clark, D. M., Mathews, A., & Williams, R. (2003). Self-images play a causal
role in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41, 909−921.
Hirsch, C. R., Meynen, T., & Clark, D. M. (2004). Negative self-imagery in social anxiety
contaminates social situations. Memory, 12, 496−506.
Holmes, E. A., Arntz, A., & Smucker, M. R. (2007). Imagery rescripting in cognitive
behaviour therapy: Images, treatment techniques and outcomes. Journal of
Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 38, 297−305.
Holmes, E. A., Mathews, A., Mackintosh, B., & Dalgleish, T. (2008). The causal effect of
mental imagery on emotion assessed using picture-word cues. Emotion, 8, 395−409.
Josephson, B., Singer, J. A., & Salovey, P. (1996). Mood regulation and memory:
Repairing sad moods with happy memories. Cognition and Emotion, 10, 437−444.
Kangas, M., Henry, J. L., & Bryant, R. A. (2005). A prospective study of autobiographical
memory and posttraumatic stress disorder following cancer. Journal of Consulting
and Clinical Psychology, 73, 293−299.
Kendler, K. S., Karkowski, L. M., & Prescott, C. A. (1999). Fears and phobias: Reliability
and heritability. Psychological Medicine, 29, 539−553.
Kocovski, N. L., Fleming, J. E., & Rector, N. A. (2009). Mindfulness and acceptance-based group
therapy for social anxiety disorder: An open trial. Cognitive Behavioral Practice, 16,
276−289.
La Greca, A. M., & Lopez, N. (1998). Social anxiety among adolescents: Linkages with
peer relations and friendships. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 26, 83−94.
Levy, E. A., & Mineka, S. (1998). Anxiety and mood-congruent autobiographical
memory: A conceptual failure to replicate. Cognition and Emotion, 12, 625−634.
Lyubomirsky, S., Caldwell, N. D., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1998). Effects of ruminative
and distracting responses to depressed mood on retrieval of autobiographical
memories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 166−177.
Magee, W. J. (1999). Effects of negative life experiences on phobia onset. Social
Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 34, 343−351.
 J. Morgan / Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010) 288–297
Magee, J. C., & Zinbarg, R. E. (2007). Suppressing and focusing on a negative memory in
social anxiety: Effects on unwanted thoughts and mood. Behaviour Research and
Therapy, 45, 2836−2849.
McFarland, C., & Buehler, R. (1998). The impact of negative affect on autobiographical
memory: The role of self-focused attention to moods. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 75, 1424−1440.
McNally, R. J., Lasko, N. B., Macklin, M. L., & Pitman, R. K. (1995). Autobiographical
memory disturbance in combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Behaviour
Research and Therapy, 33, 619−630.
McNally, R. J., Litz, B. T., Prassas, A., Shin, L. M., & Weathers, F. W. (1994). Emotional
priming of autobiographical memory in post-traumatic stress disorder. Cognition &
Emotion, 8, 351−367.
McNally, R. J., Otto, M. W., & Hornig, C. D. (2001). The voice of emotional memory:
Content-filtered speech in panic disorder, social phobia, and major depressive
disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39, 1329−1337.
Mellings, T. M. B., & Alden, L. E. (2000). Cognitive processes in social anxiety: The effects
of self-focus, rumination and anticipatory processing. Behaviour Research and
Therapy, 38, 243−257.
Mick, M. A., & Telch, M. J. (1998). Social anxiety and history of behavioural inhibition in
young adults. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 12, 1−20.
Mitte, K. (2008). Memory bias for threatening information in anxiety and anxiety
disorders: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 886−911.
Moffitt, K. H., & Singer, J. A. (1994). Continuity in the life story: Self-defining memories,
affect, and approach/avoidance personal strivings. Journal of Personality, 62, 21−43.
Moore, S. A., & Zoellner, L. A. (2007). Overgeneral autobiographical memory and
traumatic events: An evaluative review. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 419−437.
Morgan, J., & Banerjee, R. (2008). Post-event processing and autobiographical memory
in social anxiety: The influence of negative feedback and rumination. Journal of
Anxiety Disorders, 22, 1190−1204.
Musa, C., Lépine, J. P., Clark, D. M., Mansell, W., & Ehlers, A. (2003). Selective attention in
social phobia and the moderating effect of a concurrent depressive disorder. Be-
haviour Research and Therapy, 41, 1043−1054.
Neal, J. A., Edelmann, R. J., & Glachan, M. (2002). Behavioural inhibition and symptoms
of anxiety and depression: Is there a specific relationship with social phobia?
British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41, 361−374.
Neisser, U. (1982). Snapshots or benchmarks? In U. Neisser (Ed.), Memory observed:
Remembering in natural contexts (pp. 43−48). San Francisco: Freeman.
Neisser, U. (1986). Nested structure in autobiographical memory. In D. C. Rubin (Ed.),
Autobiographical memory (pp. 71−81). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Öst, L. G., & Hugdahl, K. (1981). Acquisition of phobias and anxiety response patterns in
clinical patients. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 19, 439−447.
Rachman, S. (2002). Fears born and bred: Non-associative fear acquisition? Behaviour
Research and Therapy, 40, 121−126.
Rachman, S., Grüter-Andrew, J., & Shafran, R. (2000). Post-event processing in social
anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 611−617.
Rapee, R. M., & Heimberg, R. G. (1997). A cognitive-behavioural model of anxiety in
social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35, 741−756.
Rapee, R. M., McCallum, S. L., Melville, L. F., Ravenscroft, H., & Rodney, J. M. (1994).
Memory bias in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 32, 89−99.
Richards, A., & Whittaker, T. M. (1990). Effects of anxiety and mood manipulation in
autobiographical memory. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 29, 145−153.
Ross, M., & Wilson, A. E. (2002). It feels like yesterday: Self-esteem, valence of personal
past experiences, and judgments of subjective distance. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 82, 792−803.
Roth, D. A., Coles, M. E., & Heimberg, R. G. (2002). The relationship between memories
for childhood teasing and anxiety and depression in adulthood. Journal of Anxiety
Disorders, 16, 149−164.
Rubin, D. C. (1996). Remembering our past: Studies in autobiographical memory. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Rubin, D. C. (2005). A basic-systems approach to autobiographical memory. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 79−83.
Rubin, D. C., Boals, A., & Berntsen, D. (2008). Memory in posttraumatic stress disorder:
Properties of voluntary and involuntary, traumatic and nontraumatic autobio-
297
graphical memories in people with and without posttraumatic stress disorder
symptoms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 591−614.
Schultz, L. T., & Heimberg, R. G. (2008). Attentional focus in social anxiety disorder:
Potential for interactive processes. Clinical Psychology Review, 28, 1206−1221.
Singer, J. A., & Blagov, P. S. (2004). The integrative function of narrative processing:
Autobiographical memory, self-defining memories, and the life story of identity. In
D. Beike, J. Lampinen, & D. Behrend (Eds.), The self and memory (pp. 117−138).
New York: The Psychology Press.
Spurr, J. M., & Stopa, L. (2002). Self-focused attention in social phobia and social anxiety.
Clinical Psychology Review, 22, 947−975.
Spurr, J. M., & Stopa, L. (2003). The observer perspective: Effects on social anxiety and
performance. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41, 1009−1028.
Stemberger, R. T., Turner, S. M., Beidel, D. C., & Calhoun, K. S. (1995). Social phobia: An
analysis of possible developmental factors. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 104,
526−531.
Stopa, L., & Jenkins, A. (2007). Images of the self in social anxiety: Effects on the retrieval of
autobiographical memories. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry,
38, 459−473.
Sutherland, K., & Bryant, R. A. (2005). Self-defining memories in posttraumatic stress
disorder. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44, 591−598.
Sutherland, K., & Bryant, R. A. (2008). Autobiographical memory and the self-memory
system in post-traumatic stress disorder. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22, 555−560.
Sutin, A. R., & Robins, R. W. (2005). Continuity and correlates of emotions and motives
in self-defining memories. Journal of Personality, 73, 793−824.
Teasdale, J. D., Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., Ridgeway, V. A., Soulsby, J. M., & Lau, M.
(2000). Prevention of relapse/recurrence in major depression by mindfulness-
based cognitive therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68, 615−623.
Treynor, W., Gonzalez, R., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2003). Rumination reconsidered: A
psychometric analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27, 247−259.
Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving, & W. Donaldson (Eds.),
Organisation of memory (pp. 381−403). London: Academic Press.
Vassilopoulos, S. P. (2008). Coping strategies and anticipatory processing in high and
low socially anxious individuals. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22, 98−107.
Veljaca, K. A., & Rapee, R. M. (1998). Detection of negative and positive audience
behaviours by socially anxious subjects. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36,
311−321.
Vriends, N., Becker, E. S., Meyer, A., Michael, T., & Margraf, J. (2007). Subtypes of social
phobia: Are they of any use? Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 59−75.
Wells, A., Clark, D. M., & Ahmad, S. (1998). How do I look with my mind's eye?
Perspective taking in social phobic imagery. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36,
631−634.
Wells, A., & Papageorgiou, C. (1999). The observer perspective: Biased imagery in social
phobia, agoraphobia, and blood/injury phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 37,
653−658.
Wenzel, A., Jackson, L. C., & Holt, C. S. (2002). Social phobia and the recall of
autobiographical memories. Depression and Anxiety, 15, 186−189.
Wenzel, A., Pinna, K., & Rubin, D. C. (2004). Autobiographical memories of anxiety-
related experiences. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42, 329−341.
Wenzel, A., Werner, M. M., Cochran, C. K., & Holt, C. S. (2004). A differential pattern of
autobiographical memory retrieval in social phobic and nonanxious individuals.
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 32, 1−13.
Wild, J., Hackmann, A., & Clark, D. M. (2007). When the present visits the past: Updating
traumatic memories in social phobia. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental
Psychiatry, 38, 386−401.
Wild, J., Hackmann, A., & Clark, D. M. (2008). Rescripting early memories linked to
negative images in social phobia: A pilot study. Behavior Therapy, 39, 47−56.
Williams, J. M. G., Barnhofer, T., Crane, C., Hermans, D., Raes, F., Watkins, E., & Dalgleish,
T. (2007). Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder. Psycholo-
gical Bulletin, 133, 122−148.
Wilson, A. E., & Ross, M. (2001). From chump to champ: People's appraisals of their earlier
and present selves. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 572−584.