5 - (OP7) Using Retrieval-induced Forgetting to Augment Exposure for Anxiety Disorders

Background: While efficacious treatments for anxiety disorders exist, relapse rates suggest room for improvement. Individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) demonstrate memory biases; strategies to enhance positive memories of social experiences or weaken negative memories may improve treatment response in exposure therapy. One novel option to do so is through retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). RIF, concept from cognitive psychology, indicates that selectively retrieving certain information inhibits retrieval of similar, competing information. While research on RIF in anxiety is mixed, previous research has found that more salient negative information is more susceptible to RIF, which suggests that people with SAD could be induced to forget negative social memories through RIF. This study aimed to use RIF to augment public speaking exposures. We used RIF to strengthen positive social memories and the inhibitory association that public speaking does not lead to rejection. We assessed (1) whether fear-related memories were susceptible to RIF and (2) whether RIF of fear memories was associated with change in fear of public speaking.

Methods: Participants (N=64) who feared public speaking attended two Zoom sessions within 2-3 days. They engaged in short public speaking exposures, then completed a memory task where they identified both a positive and negative memory from each speech. Participants rehearsed associations between speech topics and memories and were prompted to retrieve either only positive (experimental group) or a mix of positive and negative (control group) memories. At the end of the study, participants completed a memory test where they were presented with the speech topics and asked to recall both memories associated with each cue.

Results: In the experimental group only, participants demonstrated RIF: they better recalled unpracticed control memories than unpracticed “competitor” memories (p <.01). However, contrary to our hypothesis, difference in change in fear of public speaking did not differ between experimental groups (p=.47), possibly related to the fact that fear of public speaking did not decrease from pre to post (p=.37). In partial support of our second hypothesis, degree of RIF was associated with change in fear of public speaking across both groups (p <.01).

Conclusions: This is the first study to demonstrate RIF of fear memories in anxious participants. Results suggest that RIF may be a useful tool to strengthen positive memories during exposure therapy. However, future research is needed to understand which types of fear memories may be susceptible to RIF, given differences between experimental conditions.