Trait Anxiety and Attention: Cognitive Functioning as a Function of Attentional Demands
- PDF / 741,889 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 65 Downloads / 214 Views
Trait Anxiety and Attention: Cognitive Functioning as a Function of Attentional Demands Rotem Leshem 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract This study examined the relationship between trait anxiety and cognitive functioning, specifically response inhibition and conflict resolution, by comparing attention switching and sustained attention conditions in a dichotic-listening to words task. Results showed that high- as compared to low-anxiety participants had a lower hit rate in both attention conditions, a lower intrusion rate in the sustained attention condition, and greater difficulty shifting attention in the mixed condition. Furthermore, laterality-related findings revealed that high-anxiety participants had a lower hit rate when attention was directed to the left-ear (right hemisphere) and less intrusions when attention was directed right-ear (left hemisphere) than did the low-anxiety participants. The findings are interpreted based on attentional control and load theories as well as on the attentional model of hemisphere asymmetry, supporting the proposition that high anxiety is associated with an imbalance between bottom-up and top-down processes, and that anxiety may affect cognitive control under high cognitive load conditions. Keywords Cognitive control . Attention . Hemispheric specialization . Top-down/bottom-up processing
Introduction In recent years, a growing body of research has addressed the relationships between trait anxiety and various aspects of cognition, among them attention (Eysenck et al. 2007; PachecoUnguetti et al. 2012). Much of this work has been conducted within the context of a proposed division between two attentional systems (Berggren and Derakshan 2012; Eysenck et al. 2007; Grant and White 2016), one of them bottom-up and stimulus-driven, and the other governed by top-down processes (Corbetta and Shulman 2002). The latter system is closely associated with mechanisms of attentional control, or executive attention, which constitutes the capacity to choose the stimuli to which we do (and do not) allocate attention (Fougnie 2008; Posner and Petersen 1990). This ability to selectively attend to relevant information at the expense of other, irrelevant information relies on two component processes: sustained attention, the ability to maintain a consistent behavioral response during continuous and repetitive activity,
* Rotem Leshem [email protected] 1
Department of Criminology, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002 Ramat Gan, Israel
and attention switching, the ability to switch focus back and forth between stimuli that require different cognitive demands (Berggren and Derakshan 2012; Posner and Petersen 1990). Both components require inhibitory control, a major top-down cognitive control function, to suppress actions (Barkley 1999; Kenemans et al. 2005; Miller and Cohen 2001; Nigg 2001). As a top-down process, attentional control has been shown to be influenced by expectations, knowledge, and current goals (Corbetta and Shulman 2002; Miller and Co
Data Loading...
