Boldness moderates the effects of external threat on performance within a task-switching paradigm

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human Factors

Background:

• Set shifting is crucial for adapting to changing goals, especially under threat.
• Little is known about how external threats impact cognitive flexibility or set-shifting.
• Individual differences in threat reactivity's moderating effects are understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of external threat on set-shifting performance.
• To examine how individual differences in threat reactivity moderate these effects.
• To introduce a novel threat/task-switching paradigm for laboratory research.

Main Methods:

• A novel task-switching procedure was used with 77 participants.
• Participants alternated between two tasks under shock-threat and safe conditions.
• Individual differences were assessed via self-report and physiological measures of threat reactivity.

Main Results:

• Behavioral performance on the set-shifting task was significantly affected by the presence of threat.
• The impact of threat on performance was moderated by individual differences in threat reactivity.
• Both self-report and physiological measures indicated significant moderating effects.

Conclusions:

• Explicit threat conditions demonstrably impact set-shifting performance.
• Individual differences in threat reactivity play a key role in moderating performance under threat.
• The threat/task-switching paradigm is a valuable model for studying performance under pressure.