Anxiety disorders are characterized by difficulty distinguishing safe contexts from previous or imagined threats. Conditioned fears spread beyond what is reasonable or adaptive, leading to broad and interfering anxieties when people overgeneralize their fears. Difficulties with mnemonic discrimination, a component process of memory supporting the integration of old and new experiences, may foster overgeneralization and increase risk for anxiety disorders. Individuals along a spectrum of anxiety severity (n = 117) completed a differential fear conditioning paradigm and the computerized Mnemonic Similarity Task. The task measures mnemonic discrimination by requiring individuals to differentiate between highly similar old and new entities. We predicted that low mnemonic discrimination would be associated with overgeneralization, i.e., flatter slopes of change in response to stimuli increasingly dissimilar to the conditioned stimulus. Conditional growth models showed that as expected, participants with the highest mnemonic discrimination scores also exhibited the steepest declines in fear ratings as stimuli increasingly differed from the conditioned stimulus. Results were unchanged after adjusting for recognition memory, self-reported anxiety, and clinical diagnoses and symptoms. Results support the hypothesis that memory interference (i.e., low mnemonic discrimination) could increase vulnerability for overgeneralization. Findings justify additional exploration of mnemonic discrimination and its role in anxious psychopathology.

焦虑症的特征是难以区分安全情景和先前或想象的威胁。有条件的恐惧超出了合理的或适应性的范围，当人们过于笼统地恐惧时，会导致广泛的干扰性焦虑。记忆障碍的一个难点是记忆能力的一个组成部分，它支持新旧经验的融合，这可能会促进过度概括，并增加焦虑症的风险。沿着焦虑的严重程度的频谱个人（ñ = 117）完成了差异恐惧条件范例和计算机记忆助记相似任务。该任务通过要求个人区分高度相似的旧实体和新实体来度量助记符歧视。我们预测，助记符的低歧视将与过度概括有关，即，响应于条件刺激的刺激变化的斜率越来越平坦。有条件的增长模型表明，正如预期的那样，由于刺激与有条件的刺激之间的差异越来越大，参与者的助记符歧视得分也表现出最大的恐惧等级下降。调整识别记忆，自我报告的焦虑以及临床诊断和症状后，结果保持不变。结果支持以下假设：记忆干扰（即 低的助记符歧视）可能会增加普遍化的脆弱性。这些发现证明了对助记符歧视及其在焦虑心理病理学中的作用的进一步探索是合理的。