Chronic worry and the temporal dynamics of emotional processing.

Worriers avoid upsetting thoughts yet also demonstrate vigilance for aversive emotional information. Potentially, these processes coexist but are separated in time. Individuals scoring high on a measure of chronic uncontrollable worry were compared to low scorers during valence categorization of emotional stimuli with interleaved Stroop color word trials to monitor extended effects of emotional processing. High worriers were especially fast and accurate in judging the valence of emotional words compared to low worriers. Worriers also had smaller pupil diameters following personally relevant negative emotional stimuli compared to low worriers. Correlations with self-report scales indicated associations between the worrier pupil response profile and symptoms of chronic worry and depression. The combined behavioral and physiological data support theories of emotional vigilance followed by avoidance in worriers. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.