Cognitive trait anxiety, situational stress, and mental effort predict shifting efficiency: Implications for attentional control theory.

Abstract

Attentional control theory (ACT) predicts that trait anxiety and situational stress interact to impair performance on tasks that involve attentional shifting. The theory suggests that anxious individuals recruit additional effort to prevent shortfalls in performance effectiveness (accuracy), with deficits becoming evident in processing efficiency (the relationship between accuracy and time taken to perform the task). These assumptions, however, have not been systematically tested. The relationship between cognitive trait anxiety, situational stress, and mental effort in a shifting task (Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) was investigated in 90 participants. Cognitive trait anxiety was operationalized using questionnaire scores, situational stress was manipulated through ego threat instructions, and mental effort was measured using a visual analogue scale. Dependent variables were performance effectiveness (an inverse proportion of perseverative errors) and processing efficiency (an inverse proportion of perseverative errors divided by response time on perseverative error trials). The predictors were not associated with performance effectiveness; however, we observed a significant 3-way interaction on processing efficiency. At higher mental effort (+1 SD), higher cognitive trait anxiety was associated with poorer efficiency independently of situational stress, whereas at lower effort (-1 SD), this relationship was highly significant and most pronounced for those in the high-stress condition. These results are important because they provide the first systematic test of the relationship between trait anxiety, situational stress, and mental effort on shifting performance. The data are also consistent with the notion that effort moderates the relationship between anxiety and shifting efficiency, but not effectiveness.

Is Poor Working Memory a Transdiagnostic Risk Factor for Psychopathology?

“…For example, although models of anxiety have suggested that an important consequence of chronic rumination and worry should be manifest as worse working memory (Eysenck & Derakshan, 2011; Pessoa, 2009), as well as loss of inhibitory control over time due to ego depletion (Granic, 2014), empirically, broad evidence of such impairments have been difficult to consistently document (Berggren & Derakshan, 2013). Ongoing work in the area suggests that chronic rumination and worry may simultaneously increase motivation to perform well, thus cancelling out any performance deficits that might otherwise have been observed (Braver et al, 2014; Edwards, Edwards, & Lyvers, 2015; Pessoa, 2009). Similarly, substantial heterogeneity in neurocognitive performance is also found in depression (McClintock, Husain, Greer, & Cullum, 2010), with evidence that executive dysfunction is not observed among depressed patients who demonstrate valid effort during testing (Benitez, Horner, & Bachman, 2011; Rohling, Green, Allen, & Iverson, 2002).…”

Modeling Trait Anxiety: From Computational Processes to Personality

“…Some studies have already explored interactions between state and trait anxiety on shorter (i.e., within-experiment) timescales (212, 213) and computational accounts of the effects observed in these studies, or related effects, could also be developed. Reductions in attentional control due to stress, for example, could interact with over-general fear conditioning to severely disrupt concentration (the former effect increasing distractibility; the latter increasing the number of distractions).…”

Is set shifting really impaired in trait anxiety? Only when switching away from an effortfully established task set.

“…Two studies have showed that individuals with higher levels of trait anxiety perform worse on measure of performance effectiveness, including total errors (Casselli, Reiman, Hentz, Osborne, & Alexander, 2004), perseverative errors (Caselli, et al, 2004), or the failure to maintain sets (Gershuny & Sher, 1995). More recently, another study (Edwards, Edwards, & Lyvers, 2015) examined performance on the WCST using a measure of processing efficiency (based on the reaction time [RT] on perseverative errors). Although their results suggested that the association between trait anxiety and WCST efficiency may be specific to certain situations (i.e., when mental effort was high, or when mental effort was low but levels of situational stress were high), performance was impaired in trait anxiety across most task conditions (the only situation that did not show an association with anxiety was when both mental effort and situational stress were low).…”

“…Similarly, we will also not discuss here two recent studies that examined the relationship between trait anxiety and shifting using a dual-task paradigm (Edwards, Moore, Champion, & Edwards, 2015; Johnson & Gronlund, 2009), because there is some evidence that dual-tasking ability might be separable from shifting ability (e.g., Alzahabi & Becker, 2013; Miyake et al, 2000). …”