Generalized Anxiety Assessment

After completing the first part, all participants had to complete two different tests that measure anxiety and one that measures depression. The first test they had to complete was Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7) (Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams, & Löwe, 2006), which is a self-administered patient questionnaire and is used as a screening tool and severity measure for generalized anxiety disorder and measures any potential disturbances during the last two weeks. It consists of seven questions like “Feeling nervous, anxious or on the edge?”, “Having trouble relaxing?” and so on. The test score for these questions is calculated by assessing scores 0, 1 ,2, and 3, to the response categories of “not at all”, “several days”, “more than

Additionally, it is commonly administered in order to distinguish anxiety from depression in general and state anxiety from trait anxiety in particular (Spielberger, 1989). Versions of this measure are available for both adults and children, but in the current experiment we used the adult version. In this current study, the more popular version of STAI, (STAI Y1 AND Y2) with improved psychometric properties was used. This inventory consists of forty items, twenty items each Y, scored on a four-point Likert type response scale. Scores range from twenty to eighty with higher scores suggesting greater levels of anxiety; low scores represent mild anxiety, medial scores moderate anxiety and higher scores indicate severe anxiety. Also, both scales Y1 and Y2 contain direct and reverse-worded items (Gros, et al., 2007). Particularly, direct-worded items include statements like ‘I feel worried’, which indicates presence of anxiety in state-anxiety and ‘I worry too much over something that really doesn’t matter’ for trait-anxiety and reverse-worded items like ‘I feel secure’, which represent the absence of

In order to produce valid results, participants performed three different tasks of an alternative version of DRM paradigm, a memory-recall test that was designed especially for this study and then they completed the generalized anxiety disorder questionnaire, the Zung self-rate questionnaire and the state-trait anxiety inventory. Results demonstrated that there was no significant correlation between the different tasks of the recall test and the different mood states. That means that many participants did not exhibit that their mood state influenced their performance in any of the tasks. It might be expected in accordance with existing literature, that emotional task would cause more false memories or would enhance recall due to emotional arousal. The latter, the emotional arousal effect is also supported by Corson’s (2006) study referred above. Additionally, as it has already been supported in this study depression levels might induce more false memories. This finding is not supported in our study even for participants that indicated high scores in Zung self-rating questionnaire that measures depression. In the present study none of these hypotheses were confirmed. Also, anxiety and depression do not seem to affect participants’ general performance in any of the tasks. Consequently, none of our hypotheses are proved in this