Abstract
The present study aimed to use event-related potentials with the stop-signal task to investigate the effects of trait anxiety on inhibitory control, error monitoring, and post-error adjustments. The stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) was used to evaluate the behavioral competence of inhibitory control. Electrophysiological signals of error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe) were used to study error perception and error awareness, respectively. Post-error slowing (PES) was applied to examine the behavioral adjustments after making errors. The results showed that SSRT and PES did not differ significantly between individuals with high trait anxiety (HTA) and those with low trait anxiety (LTA). However, individuals with HTA demonstrated reduced ERN amplitudes and prolonged Pe latencies than those with LTA. Prolonged Pe latencies were also significantly associated with poorer post-error adjustments. In conclusion, HTA led to reduced cortical responses to error monitoring. Furthermore, inefficient conscious awareness of errors might lead to maladaptive post-error adjustments.
Highlights
Trait anxiety refers to individuals’ predisposition to respond to anxiety, worries, or fears to stressors and threats (McNally, 1989; Huang et al, 2012)
The present study investigated the effects of trait anxiety on error processing and post-error adjustments using event-related potential (ERP) recordings with the stop-signal task (SST)
The behavioral data showed that the stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) and Post-error slowing (PES) did not differ significantly between the high trait anxiety (HTA) and low trait anxiety (LTA) groups
Summary
Trait anxiety refers to individuals’ predisposition to respond to anxiety, worries, or fears to stressors and threats (McNally, 1989; Huang et al, 2012). Increasing evidence has shown that trait anxiety is associated with or predicts the prognosis of patients with an anxiety disorder. Kang and colleagues reported that a higher level of trait anxiety predicts poorer health-related quality of life in patients with panic disorder (Kang et al, 2015). It has been reported that trait anxiety is a predictor of the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after experiencing an earthquake (Kadak et al, 2013) and of the severity of PTSD (Suliman et al, 2014). Despite compelling evidence showing abnormally high sensitivity to stress and threats in individuals with trait anxiety (Aitken et al, 1999; Berggren and Eimer, 2021), little is known about whether executive functioning is affected in this population.
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