Two-dimensional anxiety: A confirmation using a computerized neuropsychological testing of attentional performance

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of anxiety on attentional performance with neutral stimuli. It was set up as follows: a fourfold comparison was made of trait anxiety and state anxiety. Sixty-two undergraduate students were included in the study, and four groups of subjects were set up by a median split of the scores obtained on the Spielberger Trait and State Anxiety Inventory (STAI): high trait-high state (N = 18); high trait-low state (N = 11); low trait-low state (N = 23); low trait-high state (N = 10). A computerized battery of neuropsychological tests, the ACE battery, was administered to provide a multidimensional assessment of attention. The ACE battery comprises five tests which assess the following aspects of attention: ability to monitor a routine task; temporal preparation; visual detection; memory span; visual spatial attention and memory. High state anxious subjects displayed impairment in executive functions, manifested by a significantly higher level of motor preparation in a simple reaction time (RT) task and a speed accuracy trade-off in a divided attention task; high trait anxious subjects performed significantly better on the visual detection task. No trait x state interaction was found. It was concluded that high state anxiety is associated with psychomotor alertness and high trait anxiety with perceptual alertness. These two dimensions of psychometric anxiety seem to have effects on attention that are independent of one another and which should be analysed separately in the future.