Abstract
Trait anxiety is associated with deficits in attentional control, particularly in the ability to inhibit prepotent responses. Here, we investigated this effect while varying the level of cognitive load in a modified antisaccade task that employed emotional facial expressions (neutral, happy, and angry) as targets. Load was manipulated using a secondary auditory task requiring recognition of tones (low load), or recognition of specific tone pitch (high load). Results showed that load increased antisaccade latencies on trials where gaze toward face stimuli should be inhibited. This effect was exacerbated for high anxious individuals. Emotional expression also modulated task performance on antisaccade trials for both high and low anxious participants under low cognitive load, but did not influence performance under high load. Collectively, results (1) suggest that individuals reporting high levels of anxiety are particularly vulnerable to the effects of cognitive load on inhibition, and (2) support recent evidence that loading cognitive processes can reduce emotional influences on attention and cognition.
Highlights
Efficient goal-directed behavior depends upon top-down attentional control, allowing goal-relevant information to be attended to rather than irrelevant information
Analysis showed a main effect of load [F(1, 83) = 24.52, p < 0.001], indicating slower saccade latencies under high load (M = 251 ms, SD = 29) vs. low load (M = 243 ms, SD = 33)
Results from the present study suggest that increasing cognitive load disrupts attentional control processes, but this effect is especially potent for individuals with high levels of trait anxiety
Summary
Efficient goal-directed behavior depends upon top-down attentional control, allowing goal-relevant information to be attended to rather than irrelevant information. One internal factor that has been shown to affect attentional control is an individual’s self-reported level of trait anxiety (Eysenck and Derakshan, 2011). It has been well-documented that trait anxious individuals show a bias in their selective attention toward irrelevant threatladen information, with a meta-analysis finding consistent evidence of such a bias (Bar-Haim et al, 2007). Dot probe paradigms demonstrate that highly anxious individuals show markedly increased latency costs when ignoring threatening stimuli and responding to a target at a different spatial location (e.g., Arndt and Fujiwara, 2012). Such biases could be argued to be hardwired, even extending to individual differences in amygdala response to subliminal threat items (Etkin et al, 2004)
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