Anxiety Sensitivity and Arousal Symptom Implicit Association Task Performance: An Event-Related Potential Study of Cognitive Processing of Anxiety-Relevant Stimuli

Abstract

BackgroundAnxiety sensitivity (AS), or the fear of anxious arousal, is a transdiagnostic risk factor. Despite the proliferation of self-report research showing AS is related to anxiety, cognitive processes underlying AS are poorly understood. Specifically, AS may reflect processes related to early attentional orientation and response monitoring (reflecting automatic processes), or later engagement and assigning emotional salience towards stimuli (reflecting conscious processes). MethodsTo elucidate cognitive processes underlying AS, event-related potential (ERP) components were elicited in the current study during a novel implicit association task (IAT) in which participants paired self (versus other) words with anxious arousal (versus calm) words. Analyses were then conducted in a sample of community adults (N = 67; M age 39.43, SD = 15.33, 61.2% female) to investigate the association between AS and ERP markers indicative of cognitive processing derived during the IAT. ResultsAS was not related to performance on the arousal-IAT and that ERP components did not differ by IAT condition. AS predicted overall late positive potential (LPP) amplitude, particularly in the me/anxiety condition. Elevated IAT scores (reflecting greater ease pairing self-words with anxiety-words) predicted greater P300 amplitude in the me/anxiety condition. LimitationsThe sample was relatively small, and bottom-up processes were not assessed. ConclusionsThese findings are inconsistent with the claim that AS is related to top-down cognitive processes driving self-arousal automatic associations. Instead, AS may relate to cognitive processes regulating emotional engagement with stimuli. Further investigations of cognitive processes underlying AS are needed to inform novel interventions targeting AS.