Anxiety Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anxiety, including details on anxiety disorder, panic attacks, medication, counselling, therapy.

The Meta-Contrast Technique: relationships with personality traits and cognitive abilities in healthy women.

Persson R, Osterberg K, Karlson B, Orbaek P

Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Lund University, Sweden.

The relationship between test results from the Meta-Contrast Technique (MCT) and self-reports from Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP), or the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T), was investigated in 100 healthy women. Additionally, it was investigated whether age and cognitive abilities influenced the reports of picture recognition thresholds in the MCT. The results showed no agreement between the different ways to assess anxiety and defensiveness. However, age consistently predicted later reports of the perceptual recognition thresholds A1 (the car), A2 (the face) and C-phase. The WAIS-R Digit Symbol Score predicted earlier reporting of the recognition thresholds A1 and A2, but did not predict the final criteria for correct recognition (C-phase). The KSP aggression factor only predicted an earlier report of recognition threshold A2. The absence of a simple relationship between the different ways to assess anxiety and defensiveness, and the observed relationships regarding perceptual threshold levels, corroborates previous findings.

Published 14 March 2005 in Scand J Psychol, 46(2): 169-77.
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