The impact of pre-existing anxiety on affective and cognitive processing of a Virtual Reality analogue trauma.

ABSTRACT: Dysfunctional processing of traumatic events may be in particular related to high trait anxiety as a pre-traumatic risk factor for the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, as this has rarely been investigated in prospective, experimental studies, we aimed to analyse the association between high trait anxiety and affective as well as cognitive processing of stress using a new prospective Virtual Reality analogue trauma paradigm to overcome limitations of retrospective or current analogue designs. Individuals with high and low trait anxiety (N = 80) were exposed to a multi-sensory Virtual Reality emergency scenario while psychophysiological stress response, emotion regulation and intrusive memories were assessed. Our results showed that high trait anxiety individual

SUBMITTER: Schweizer T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5747458 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature