Cognitive Biases in Anxiety and Depression

This special issue of Cognition and Emotion is dedicated to the phenomena of emotion-related biases in attention and remembering that are experienced by anxious and depressed people. Andrew Mathews and Colin MacLeod summarize their new research in using experimental methods to train anxiety-like biases in attention and interpretation. Elaine Fox, Riccardo Russo, and Kevin Dutton report new experiments concerning delayed disengagement from threatening events in anxiety. Phil Watkins's article addresses the conditions for obtaining depression-related biases on indirect tests of memory. Depression-consistent biases in false recognition are reported by Rich Wenzlaff, Jo Meier, and Danette Salas; these biases also characterized performance by previously dysphoric students and suggest indirect measures of vulnerability to depression. Prospective evidence that cognitive biases index vulnerability is described by Stephanie Rude and her colleagues. In short, the special issue contains a mixture of new findings with integrative review and suggestions for future directions in investigations of emotionally-disordered cognition.