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Anxiety: Overview

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Anxiety is a common mental disorder featuring excessive worry, fear, and apprehension, significantly affecting daily life. People with anxiety disorders experience persistent and intense anxiety, interrupting their everyday functioning.
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Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a chronic condition characterized by excessive and uncontrollable worry that persists for at least six months, significantly interfering with daily functioning. Unlike situational anxiety, which arises in response to specific stressors, GAD often occurs without a clear cause. Individuals may experience disproportionate worry about work, health, or relationships. For instance, a person might continuously fear poor health despite normal medical evaluations or...

Social Anxiety Disorder

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Social anxiety disorder, also known as social phobia, is characterized by an intense fear of social situations where one might face humiliation, rejection, embarrassment, or negative evaluation. This disorder leads individuals to avoid activities like casual conversations, public speaking, or seemingly simple tasks such as eating, signing documents, or swimming, in public settings. Its impact extends beyond discomfort, often significantly interfering with daily functioning and quality of life.

Cross-reactivity

Cross-reactivity

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance

Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance

Published on: July 19, 2017

State Anxiety Impairs Proactive but Enhances Reactive Control.

Youcai Yang^1,2,3, Tara A Miskovich², Christine L Larson²

¹Key Laboratory of Adolescent Health Assessment and Exercise Intervention of Ministry of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

Frontiers in Psychology

|January 9, 2019

Summary

State anxiety impairs proactive control but enhances reactive control. This suggests anxiety affects goal maintenance and conflict monitoring differently, impacting cognitive flexibility.

Keywords:

AX-continuous performance task Stroop task anxiety cognitive control proactive control reactive control working memory

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Area of Science:

Cognitive psychology
Neuroscience

Background:

Cognitive control allows adaptation to changing environments.
Dual Mechanism of Control (DMC) theory distinguishes proactive and reactive control.
Anxiety's differential impact on these control mechanisms is theorized but not directly tested.

Purpose of the Study:

To directly compare the effects of state anxiety on proactive and reactive control within the same individuals.
To investigate how induced anxiety influences cognitive control operations.

Main Methods:

Utilized the AX-continuous performance task (AX-CPT) to assess proactive control.
Employed the classic Stroop task to measure reactive control.
Induced state anxiety using a threat of shock manipulation.

Main Results:

State anxiety significantly inhibited proactive control on the AX-CPT.
State anxiety significantly enhanced reactive control on the Stroop task.
Findings align with predictions that anxiety differentially affects control mechanisms.

Conclusions:

Anxiety may impair proactive control by consuming working memory resources needed for goal maintenance.
Anxiety may enhance reactive control through heightened attention to threat and improved conflict monitoring.
These findings elucidate the complex relationship between anxiety and cognitive control.