Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Psychology

Advisor

Evelyn Behar

Committee Members

Nicholas Sibrava

Kathleen Gunthert

Regina Miranda

Jennifer Ford

Subject Categories

Clinical Psychology

Keywords

prediction, memory, interoception, anxiety sensitivty, cognitive bias

Abstract

Predicting and remembering emotional states (affective forecasting and recall) are adaptive processes that allow individuals to engage with the future and past to guide behavior, yet these processes are prone to bias. Although affective forecasting and recall biases are common across healthy populations, more pessimistically biased affective forecasts and recall have been linked to greater anxiety and depression symptom levels and to emotional disorders. A crucially understudied aspect of affective forecasting and recall is the perception of the somatic (interoceptive) symptoms that accompany emotions. This study investigated forecasting and recall accuracy of somatic symptom levels (i.e., interoceptive forecasting and recall). It also evaluated the roles of anxiety sensitivity (AS) and disgust sensitivity (DS), two transdiagnostic mechanisms associated with interoceptive dysfunction and psychopathology. Finally, it explored the tendency to focus on a specific event during forecasting and recall (i.e., focalism bias). Participants (N = 181) forecasted somatic symptoms in general and in response to expected idiographic and societal focal events over the upcoming week. Over the next seven days, they reported their somatic symptoms three times per day. Finally, they recalled somatic symptom levels in general over the prior week and in response to the focal events that occurred. Results indicated that participants over-forecasted and over-recalled levels of somatic symptoms. AS (but not DS) predicted greater and more biased forecasts and recall, and less focus on specific events (i.e., focalism bias). These findings suggest that interoceptive forecasting and recall is susceptible to similar biases that exist during affective forecasting and recall. Furthermore, appraisal of somatic symptoms as dangerous (i.e., AS) uniquely biases interoceptive forecasting and recall processes. These findings have implications for both fear learning and safety learning.

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