Negative thoughts about future events are a central aspect of anxiety disorders. It is important to gain a deeper understanding of how these imagined events are retained over time when considering the impact of negative future thoughts on anxiety. Prior research indicates that emotional intensity fades faster for negative than positive memories in healthy individuals. This so-called fading-affect bias could extend to recall of imagined future events. Furthermore, several studies have suggested that this bias may be reversed in individuals with high levels of anxiety. In the current study, we examined whether individuals with high anxiety (n = 23), relative to individuals with low anxiety (n = 30), showed faster decay for positive than negative future-event simulations. The results show that emotion facilitated cued recall for imagined future events in the low-anxiety group but not in the high-anxiety group. In addition, individuals with high anxiety showed decreased episodic specificity during recall across all emotional conditions.

对未来事件的负面想法是焦虑症的一个核心方面。在考虑未来消极想法对焦虑的影响时，更深入地了解这些想象中的事件如何随着时间的推移而保留下来，这一点很重要。先前的研究表明，健康个体的负面记忆比积极记忆的情绪强度消退得更快。这种所谓的衰落影响偏差可能会扩展到对想象中的未来事件的回忆。此外，几项研究表明，这种偏见可能会在高度焦虑的个体中得到逆转。在当前的研究中，我们检查了高度焦虑的个体 ( n = 23)，相对于低焦虑的个体 ( n= 30)，显示出正比负未来事件模拟更快的衰减。结果表明，情绪促进了低焦虑组但不是高焦虑组对想象中的未来事件的线索回忆。此外，高度焦虑的个体在所有情绪条件下的回忆过程中都表现出降低的情节特异性。