{"pk":26008,"title":"The spiral of anxiety: a cognitive account","subtitle":null,"abstract":"We present a series of propositions that explains why people find sitting quietly in a dark room strongly aversive\n(Wilson et al., 2014).\n(i) Conflict-monitoring is an essential cognitive function; likely performed at the level of information processing conflicts\n(Botvinick et al, 2001) (ii) Memory is sensitized to processing conflicts; if a conflict has not been resolved in real-time, it\nis recalled when the mind is disengaged (iii) This is mind-wandering (Smallwood et al, 2003) (iv) Since mind-wandering\nprivileges conflict recall for resolution, and resolving conflicts requires effort, mind-wandering becomes aversive (v) To avoid\nmind-wandering, a common strategy is to increase intensity of activity, so mind has no time to wander (vi) But increasing\ndensity of activity increases the number of possible information conflicts, which further deepens aversion to sitting quietly (vii)\nThis is anxiety\nUnderstanding the cognitive mechanics of this spiral of anxiety may help break it","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Member Abstracts","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5sv2j9d0","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Nisheeth","middle_name":"","last_name":"Srivastava","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California San Diego","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26008/galley/15632/download/"}]}