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Anxiety moderates the interplay between cognitive and affective processing.

Jeremy D Dvorak-Bertsch1, John J Curtin, Tal J Rubinstein

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1696, USA. jdbertsch@wisc.edu

Psychological Science
|August 8, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Anxiety influences emotional processing by affecting attention. High anxiety increases fear responses when attention is divided, but not when focused on threats or under high cognitive load.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Clinical Psychology

Background:

  • Attention and cognitive load impact emotional processing.
  • Individual differences in anxiety can moderate these effects.
  • Fear-potentiated startle (FPS) is a measure of emotional reactivity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how attentional focus and cognitive load affect fear-potentiated startle (FPS).
  • To examine the moderating role of trait anxiety on FPS across different cognitive conditions.
  • To understand the relationship between attentional resources and exaggerated threat processing in anxiety.

Main Methods:

  • Measured FPS under three conditions: threat-focused (TF), low-load/alternative-set (LL/AS), and high-load/alternative-set (HL/AS).

Related Experiment Videos

  • Assessed trait anxiety levels in participants.
  • Compared FPS responses between high-anxiety and low-anxiety individuals across conditions.

    • Main Results:

    • Redirecting attention from threat cues and increasing cognitive load significantly reduced FPS.
    • The moderating effect of anxiety on FPS was specific to the LL/AS condition.
    • High-anxiety individuals showed greater FPS than low-anxiety individuals only when attention was divided (LL/AS).

    Conclusions:

    • Affective processing, particularly threat processing, requires attentional resources.
    • Exaggerated threat processing in anxious individuals is linked to the direction of attention, not solely emotional reactivity.
    • Cognitive load and attentional focus are critical factors in understanding anxiety-related differences in emotional processing.