Enhanced long-term memory for distractors via attention in trait and social anxiety

Individuals with anxiety and social anxiety direct their attention toward emotionally neutral task-irrelevant distractors. However, what happens after attention is paid to neutral distractors remains unknown. This study examined whether attention to distractors enhances long-term memory (LTM) of distractors in individuals with anxiety and social anxiety. Participants performed a visual-search task using real-world objects under either anxiety induction (Experiment 1) or no anxiety induction (Experiment 2). Subsequently, in the surprise-recognition task, participants were required to indicate whether an object had been shown in the visual-search task. The results showed that anxiety and social anxiety, especially the fear of negative evaluation, positively correlated with attentional bias toward neutral distractors. Moreover, mediation analysis showed significant indirect effects of anxiety and social anxiety on LTM through attentional bias. These results suggest that individuals with anxiety and social anxiety involuntarily direct their attention to distractors, which enhances their LTM.