A Study on the Explicit and Implicit Memory Bias among People with Social Anxiety Disorder and Normal Participants

Abstract

Anxiety disorders, especially social phobia, are among the most important disorders among university students, which need particular attention. The present research was carried out to compare explicit and implicit memory among people with social phobia and normal subjects. In the present study which is of the causal-comparative type, the research subjects consisted of 50 individuals suffering from social anxiety disorder and 50 normal individuals, who were selected via screening from among the students of the University of Tabriz. Data collection was performed using the social anxiety scale, word stem completion task, and cued recall test. The collected data were analyzed using the multivariate analysis of variance method. The results of the study showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups in implicit memory when remembering positive and negative words, but no significant difference was observed between the two groups in explicit memory.