Neurophysiological correlates for dynamic variability between vigilance and avoidance in test anxiety

Attention bias (ABs) to threat is essential in the etiology and maintenance of test anxiety. However, little is known about the attention pattern of ABs in test anxiety. The stimulus duration affects the attention pattern in anxiety. Thus, the present research combined the dot-probe paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs) and varied the stimulus duration (100 ms or 500 ms) to test the ABs in test anxiety. Consequently, both groups showed a threat N2pc in 100 ms and 500 ms duration, suggesting that both groups allocated attention to the test-related threat. However, in the 100 ms duration, the high test-anxious (HTA) group had smaller target-elicited P1 and greater target-elicited N2 in the threat-congruent condition than in the neutral condition. In the 500 ms duration, an earlier threat N2pc and a threat PD followed a greater target P1, and smaller target N2 were pronounced in the HTA group. The current results provided electrophysiological evidence that the HTA group kept a dynamic attention pattern that fluctuated shift between vigilance and avoidance in the 100 ms and 500 ms duration. The HTA group was more vigilant than the LTA group in the 500 ms duration when strategic attention was concerned, proposing that vigilance in test anxiety was not an automatic process.