The purpose of the current study was to clarify the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying social phobia. Previous research has identified some specific group differences in neurocognitive functioning between individuals diagnosed with social phobia and nonpsychiatric controls, but has failed to administer a comprehensive neuropsychological battery to a social phobia patient group, resulting in a piecemeal understanding of the neurocognitive functioning of this population and an incomplete picture of the neuropsychological profile inherent to this group. The present research utilized a broader collection of neuropsychological tests to assess nine cognitive domains: Verbal Learning, Verbal Delayed Memory, Visual Immediate Memory, Visual Delayed Memory, Visual-Spatial Processing, Verbal Working Memory, Visual Working Memory, Executive Functioning, and Attention. A mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) did not reveal a significant group by cognitive domain interaction, nor a significant main effect of group. As this was the first study to examine multiple cognitive domains in a single sample of individuals with generalized social phobia, exploratory univariate analyses were performed to examine group differences for the specific cognitive domains. This revealed significant group differences specific to the Visual Working Memory domain, with the social phobia group scoring significantly lower than the nonpsychiatric control group. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-5126 |
| Date | 01 January 2009 |
| Creators | Sutterby, Scott |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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