Stimulus control applications to the treatment of worry

As an internal, self-generated event, worrisome cognitive activity can occur under a wide variety of environmental conditions. The contiguity of the activity and diverse cues would suggest that poor discriminative control is established, and, conversely, that subject-initiated restriction of the temporal and environmental cues for the occurrence of the activity may reduce its frequency during the day. Two experiments are reported wherein self-labeled worriers received either no-treatment or a 4-week trial of stimulus control instructions designed to effect such a restriction. Daily worry reports were found to decline significantly among treated subjects relative to controls.