Enhanced visual detection in trait anxiety.

Abstract

There is much evidence suggesting that trait anxiety is associated with impairments in the cognitive control of attention. Recent findings, though, have suggested that anxiety may also influence perception, conversely enhancing early information processing. The present study investigated this claim within a visual detection task. Participants searched for a target letter among a number of nontarget letters, varied to modulate the demands or load on perception, while also reporting whether an additional stimulus appeared on trials. Self-reported trait anxiety levels did not affect performance in the letter search task under any level of load. However, visual detection for the additional stimulus, as measured by d' sensitivity, was positively correlated with levels of anxiety regardless of the perceptual difficulty of the search task. These results suggest that trait vulnerability to anxiety is associated with improved visual detection, providing direct evidence that anxiety may modulate sensory processing.