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Updated: Jun 13, 2026

Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
Published on: July 19, 2017
Attention and anxiety: different attentional functioning under state and trait anxiety
Antonia Pilar Pacheco-Unguetti1, Alberto Acosta, Alicia Callejas
1Department of Experimental Psychology and Physiology of Behavior, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Abstract:
Anxiety modulates the functioning of attention. Although the existence of this relationship is clear, its nature is still poorly defined. Added are the facts that different types of anxiety--state or trait--may influence attention differently and that attention is not a unitary system. We studied the influence of such types of anxiety by means of a task that, using emotionally neutral information, assesses the efficiency of three attentional networks: orienting, alerting, and executive control. Results showed a double dissociation. Trait anxiety was related to deficiencies in the executive control network, but state anxiety was associated with an overfunctioning of the alerting and orienting networks.
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