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Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
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Better cognitive efficiency is associated with increased experimental anxiety.

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Cognitive training that improves working memory (WM) may paradoxically increase anxiety. Enhanced WM may free up resources to process threat, leading to greater anxiety responses.

Keywords:
anxietycognitive controlstartle blinkworking memory

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Psychology
  • Anxiety research

Background:

  • Working memory (WM) training is explored for anxiety symptom relief.
  • Previous research suggests high WM load can reduce anxiety, but pharmacological or exercise-based WM improvements negate this effect.
  • This suggests improved WM may increase anxiety by freeing cognitive resources for threat processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To experimentally investigate the relationship between working memory (WM) training and anxiety.
  • To test the hypothesis that practicing a high-load WM task enhances WM and subsequently increases anxiety.

Main Methods:

  • Participants were randomly assigned to either an active-training group (1- and 3-back WM tasks) or a control-training group (0-back WM task).
  • Following training, all participants completed a WM task under conditions of both threat of shock and safety.
  • Anxiety was measured via startle response during the WM task.

Main Results:

  • Active WM training significantly improved WM accuracy.
  • Participants in the active-training group exhibited increased anxiety (greater startle) during the high-load (3-back) WM task under threat conditions.
  • These findings support the hypothesis that improved WM can heighten anxiety.

Conclusions:

  • Enhancing working memory (WM) efficiency through cognitive training can lead to increased anxiety.
  • This effect may be mediated by the freeing of cognitive resources, which are then available for processing threat-related information.
  • Findings suggest a complex interplay between cognitive capacity and emotional regulation in anxiety.