Altering Negative Implicit Associations in a Sub-clinical Sample of High-worriers by means of the Affective Simon Task Training

Abstract

Negative implicit associations are thought to play a crucial role in psychological disorders for example through the mechanism of worry. High-worriers have been found to show generalized negative implicit associations with neutral words from worry-domains. The current study aims to affect these negative implicit associations by means of an Affective Simon Task training (AST-T). In this training, an association is trained by repeatedly pairing worry-related words with positive response words, while the explicit instruction, of which the participant is aware, is unrelated to the worry topic. The AST-T was tested with an active training group and a control group in a student sample with subclinical symptoms of extensive worry. The AST-T was successful in so far that participants responded faster to the newly learned positive association in the training condition. This positive association however did not transfer to an affective evaluation of worry-related words.