Ansiedade e memória: O Efeito da ansiedade social na memória de destino

Abstract

In this investigation, we seeked to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms behind destination memory, a type of memory vital to our social activity, allowing us to remember what we said and to whom we said it. To this day many doubts remain about it's relationship and other human constructs. Accordingly, the objective was to look into the correlation between social anxiety symptoms and efficacy of destination memory. Analyzing results of social anxiety diagnostic scales and results gotten from the current destination memory investigation paradigm. The latter includes an exposition phase, where the participant will be presented with popular sayings that he will have to silently read, afterwards the face of a celebrity will be displayed and the participant must repeat the saying out loud. Subsequently, there will be a test phase where the participant will be questioned if he had said given saying to a certain celebrity. The sample was formed by 135 young adults ranging from 18 to 30 years of age. The results show no statistical differences between participants with clinical and healthy levels of social anxiety when it comes to destination memory. However, due to the limitation of this study, it is not possible to assure that there is no relation between both variables, due to the fact that in the experiment, there is no simulation of a normal social interaction but only destination memory tasks. Therefore, symptoms may not be felt by the participant and lead to social anxiety not impacting his performance. In future studies, a more experimental method should be considered in order to actively manipulate the participant into feeling symptoms of social anxiety and analyze how these impact destination memory.