AUTOMATICITY AND THE ANXIETY DISORDERS

Experimental psychopathologists have increasingly relied upon the concepts and methods of cognitive psychology in their attempts to elucidate information-processing biases associated with anxiety disorders. Many of these biases presumably constitute instances of automatic, not strategic, processing. But research has shown that attributes of automaticity (i.e. capacity-free, unconsious, involuntary) do not all apply to selective processing of threat associated with anxiety. Experimental and clinical findings suggest that biases are automatic in the sense of being involuntary (and sometimes unconscious), but not in the sense of being capacity-free. Implications of involuntary automatic processing of threat for behavior therapy are discussed.