Anxiety is Associated With Biases in Task Generalization.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral science

Background:

• Adaptive behavior relies on generalizing learned task structures to new situations.
• Anxiety is known to affect stimulus-based threat generalization.
• The impact of anxiety on task generalization (transfer of action-outcome structures) is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how trait worry affects task generalization in a novel navigation paradigm.
• To determine if anxiety biases the transfer of learned action-outcome structures to new planning contexts.

Main Methods:

• Developed an online navigation task with latent task categories and unique transition dynamics.
• Incidental threat (negative social evaluation) was paired with one task category.
• Assessed generalization performance in relation to individual trait worry levels.

Main Results:

• Participants generally generalized latent task structure above chance.
• Individuals high in trait worry showed undergeneralization, reducing action use in threat contexts.
• Worry predicted worse generalization in new threat contexts and better performance in safe tasks.
• Undergeneralization was not explained by reinforcement history or general performance deficits.

Conclusions:

• Anxiety may distort task representations used for goal pursuit, not just threat perception.
• Anxious individuals might exclude behavioral strategies associated with threat from future task models.
• Preliminary evidence suggests anxiety impacts cognitive flexibility in goal-relevant domains.