Working Memory Updating Training Can Alleviate Social Anxiety By Reducing Rumination

Social anxiety not only brings troubles to the individual’s life and interpersonal communication,but also affects the individual’s mental health in the later period and the future career development.Recently,researchers have begun to explore the effect of working memory on social anxiety,but few studies have explored the mechanism of working memory on social anxiety.In this study,we investigated the effect of working memory training on social anxiety from the perspective of ruminantion,a maladaptive regulatory factor.In the first study of this research,we chose college students(N=185)as subjects,used the 2-back updating tasks,Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale,Rumination Response Scale,the Beck Depression Inventory and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory as a covariate,measured individuals’ ability to updating,rumination thinking level and the degree of social anxiety.The result showed that there was a significantly negative correlation between upadating ability and brooding;a significantly positive relation correlation between brooding,reflection and social anxiety.In addition,the rumination completely played a mediation role in individual’s updating ability and social anxiety.In the second study,we also chose college students(N=76)with high social anxiety as subjects and divided into the training group and the control group,and the training group were trained with adaptive dual n-back for working memory training for 20 days.During this time,the control group was given the sand painting task for 20 days.Before and after training,2-back updating tasks,Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale,Rumination Response Scale,the Beck Depression Inventory and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were used to evaluate the two groups of subjects.The results showed that,after training,the updating ability of the training group was significantly higher than that of the pre-test and can reduce individuals’ ruminant tendency and the degree of social anxiety symptom was relieved.The results indicate that working memory training can reduce ruminant tendency and thus alleviate social anxiety symptom.