[The effect of selective attention to emotional stimuli on recognition memory in anxiety]

It has been argued that the selective attention characteristic of trait anxiety does not significantly influence on memory. However, attention to stimuli is considered to accelerate memory performance of the stimuli in general. The present study examined whether the selective attention due to emotional valences could reflect on recognition memory in individuals with high anxiety. In the encoding phase, a set of pairs of emotional and neutral words was presented. The duration of presentation of stimuli was manipulated in two conditions (1,300 ms vs. 2,000 ms). There was no difference in responses for stimuli between with positive and with negative valences. In the short-presentation condition, compared to the control group, the high-anxious group demonstrated greater discrimination for emotional (positive and negative) stimuli relative than for neutral ones. Their false alarm rate, on the other hand, was consistently higher than the subjects in the low-anxious group. Results in the present study suggested that selective attention that the high-anxious subjects allocated to emotional stimuli could influence performance of recognition of those stimuli.