BRIEF REPORT: Emotional Value of Information and its Relevance in the Interpretation of Homophones in Anxiety

Two groups of subjects (high and low in trait anxiety) were tested in the spelling of homophones presented acoustically. Two types of homophones were used. One set could be spelled either in a neutral or in a target threatening version (e.g. dye, die), the other could be spelled either in a neutral or in a target emotional nonthreatening version (e.g. deer, dear). The high anxiety group showed equivalent level of bias, relative to controls, toward spelling the target versions of both threatening and emotional nonthreatening homophone types. The results suggested that information-processing bias in anxiety may be related to the emotional value of the information more than to its threatening content.