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Updated: Jun 29, 2026

Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
Published on: July 19, 2017
Trouble crossing the bridge: altered interhemispheric communication of emotional images in anxiety
Rebecca J Compton1, Joshua Carp, Laura Chaddock
1Department of Psychology, Haverford College, Haverford, PA 19041, USA. rcompton@haverford.edu
Abstract:
Worry is thought to involve a strategy of cognitive avoidance, in which internal verbalization acts to suppress threatening emotional imagery. This study tested the hypothesis that worry-prone individuals would exhibit patterns of between-hemisphere communication that reflect cognitive avoidance. Specifically, the hypothesis predicted slower transfer of threatening images from the left to the right hemisphere among worriers. Event-related potential (ERP) measures of interhemispheric transfer time supported this prediction. Left-to-right hemisphere transfer times for angry faces were relatively slower for individuals scoring high in self-reported worry compared with those scoring low, whereas transfer of happy and neutral faces did not differ between groups. These results suggest that altered interhemispheric communication may constitute one mechanism of cognitive avoidance in worry.
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