Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence reveals the effects of trait anxiety on contingent attentional capture

Abstract

Few studies have investigated the effects of anxiety on contingent attentional capture. The present study examined contingent attentional capture in trait anxiety by applying a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm during electroencephalographic recording. Overall, the behavioral and electrophysiological results showed a larger capture effect when a distractor was the same color as the target compared to when the distractor was not of the target color. Moreover, high-anxiety individuals showed a larger N2pc in the target colored distractor condition and nontarget colored distractor condition compared to the distractor-absent condition. In addition, the reaction time was slower when distractors were presented in the left visual field compared to when they were in the right visual field. This pattern was not seen in low-anxiety individuals. The findings may indicate that high-anxiety individuals allocate attention to the target less efficiently and have reduced suppression of distractors compared to low-anxiety individuals who could suppress attention to the distractors more efficiently. Future work could valuably investigate the consequences of such differences in terms of benefits and disruption associated with attentional capture differences in a range of anxious populations in different risk monitoring situations.

Meditation Effects on the Control of Involuntary Contingent Reorienting Revealed With Electroencephalographic and Behavioral Evidence

“…The present findings are consistent with previous evidence regarding the effects of distractors on RSVP performance (Chang et al, 2013 , 2016 ; Tsai et al, 2017 ), with accuracy significantly lower in the TC distractor condition than the NTC and distractor absent conditions. This indicates that only the lateral TC distractors, which induced contingent reorienting, interfered with subjects’ ability to recognize the central target.…”

“…The design of the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task employed in this study allowed investigation of meditation effects on attentional suppression of salient but task-irrelevant distractors which typically induce contingent reorienting (i.e., a shift of attention from a central target stream to laterally located distractors, see “Materials and Methods” section and Figure 2 ) and disengagement from the current attentional focus (e.g., shifting attention from a lateral distractor back to the central target stream). Previous studies using the RSVP paradigm (Chang et al, 2016 ; Tsai et al, 2017 ) demonstrated significant N2pc and Pd components in event related potential recordings during contingent reorienting. The N2pc is an index of attentional deployment (Sawaki and Luck, 2014 ), and is defined as the negative component around 200 ms following a stimulus, with “pc” referring to its posterior-contralateral location (Luck and Hillyard, 1994a ).…”

“…The task (see Figure 2 ) was adapted from (Chang et al, 2013 , 2016 ; Tsai et al, 2017 ) and involved presentation of three letter streams on a white background. These were shown on a 23″ LCD monitor with a vertical refresh rate of 120 Hz.…”

“…Here, we expected that, should meditation training alter performance, such a process would be a good candidate for the origin of such modulation. Hence, this study aimed to examine the effects of meditation on attentional control of contingent reorienting that emphasized the interaction between goal-directed and stimulus-driven attentional control (Corbetta et al, 2008 ; Chang et al, 2013 , 2016 ; Tsai et al, 2017 ).…”

The Role of Sleep Quality, Trait Anxiety and Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Measures in Cognitive Abilities of Healthy Individuals

“…However, this last study did not support a link between trait anxiety and poor extinction. In another study exploring the impact of trait anxiety on visual search and rapid serial visual presentation tasks [ 57 ], high-anxiety individuals allocated attention to the target less efficiently and had reduced suppression of distractors than did low-anxiety individuals. In our sample, trait anxiety was more clearly associated with impaired cognition in middle-aged men.…”