Subjectively Reported Anxiety as a Discriminator of Digit Span Performance

Firetto, Anthony; Davey, Heather M.

doi:10.2466/pr0.1971.28.1.98

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Similar findings were reported by Hodges and Durham (1972) who recorded digit spans at baseline and then again after participants were informed that they appeared to be experiencing much more difficulty than other participants (however, see Steyaert & Snyder, 1985). Walker, Sannito, & Firetto (1970) and Firetto and Davey (1971) attempted to confirm that the ego-threat effect was due to an increase in anxiety. As these studies were conducted before the development of statistical mediation techniques, they rated participants on the extent to which they “appeared anxious” and demonstrated that the ego-threat manipulation reduced digit spans only for those participants who appeared anxious.…”

Section: Review Of the Literature On Anxiety And Working Memory Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and working memory capacity: A meta-analysis and narrative review.

Moran

2016

Psychological Bulletin

557

339

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Cognitive deficits are now widely recognized to be an important component of anxiety. In particular, anxiety is thought to restrict the capacity of working memory by competing with task-relevant processes. The evidence for this claim, however, has been mixed. Although some studies have found restricted working memory in anxiety, others have not. Within studies that have found impairments, there is little agreement regarding the boundary conditions of the anxiety/WMC association. The aim of this review is to critically evaluate the evidence for anxiety-related deficits in working memory capacity. First, a meta-analysis of 177 samples (N = 22,061 individuals) demonstrated that self-reported measures of anxiety are reliably related to poorer performance on measures of working memory capacity (g = -.334, p < 10-29). This finding was consistent across complex span (e.g., OSPAN; g = -.342, k = 30, N = 3,196, p = .000001), simple span (e.g., digit span; g = -.318, k = 127, N = 17,547, p < 10-17), and dynamic span tasks (e.g., N-Back; g = -.437, k = 20, N = 1,318, p = .000003). Second, a narrative review of the literature revealed that anxiety, whether self-reported or experimentally induced, is related to poorer performance across a wide variety of tasks. Finally, the review identified a number of methodological limitations common in the literature as well as avenues for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Section: Review Of the Literature On Anxiety And Working Memory Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and working memory capacity: A meta-analysis and narrative review.

Moran

2016

Psychological Bulletin

557

339

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is in contrast with research examining the effects of other anxiety induction methods where working memory capacity is limited by anxiety (Schoofs et al, 2008). Specifically, working memory capacity, not performance accuracy (however see Oei et al, 2006), is impaired by threatening pictures (Lindström and Bohlin, 2012), the cold pressor test (Schoofs et al, 2008; Duncko et al, 2009), and incidental changes in state anxiety (Walker and Spence, 1964; Firetto and Davey, 1971; Lapointe et al, 2013). In contrast to research using threat of shock, these findings are in line with processing efficiency theory (Eysenck and Calvo, 1992), which argues that anxious worry (1) reduces working memory processing capacity and (2) increases effort necessary to perform the task, thus increasing reaction time [although Duncko et al (2009) found decreased reaction time under stress].…”

Section: Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of anxiety upon cognition: perspectives from human threat of shock studies

Robinson¹,

Vytal²,

Cornwell³

et al. 2013

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

476

429

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Anxiety disorders constitute a sizeable worldwide health burden with profound social and economic consequences. The symptoms are wide-ranging; from hyperarousal to difficulties with concentrating. This latter effect falls under the broad category of altered cognitive performance which is the focus of this review. Specifically, we examine the interaction between anxiety and cognition focusing on the translational threat of unpredictable shock paradigm; a method previously used to characterize emotional responses and defensive mechanisms that is now emerging as valuable tool for examining the interaction between anxiety and cognition. In particular, we compare the impact of threat of shock on cognition in humans to that of pathological anxiety disorders. We highlight that both threat of shock and anxiety disorders promote mechanisms associated with harm avoidance across multiple levels of cognition (from perception to attention to learning and executive function)—a “hot” cognitive function which can be both adaptive and maladaptive depending upon the circumstances. This mechanism comes at a cost to other functions such as working memory, but leaves some functions, such as planning, unperturbed. We also highlight a number of cognitive effects that differ across anxiety disorders and threat of shock. These discrepant effects are largely seen in “cold” cognitive functions involving control mechanisms and may reveal boundaries between adaptive (e.g., response to threat) and maladaptive (e.g., pathological) anxiety. We conclude by raising a number of unresolved questions regarding the role of anxiety in cognition that may provide fruitful avenues for future research.

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“…The few studies that have focused on STM for neutral stimuli in anxiety have indicated that alterations in STM may also characterize the cognitive profile of anxious individuals (Eysenck, 1979;Eysenck, Payne, & Derakshan, 2005;Hayes et al, 2008). It has been demonstrated with different paradigms that high state anxiety reduces performance in verbal STM (e.g., digit span task, Darke, 1988;Firetto & Davey, 1971;Hodges & Spielberger, 1969;reading span task, Sorg & Whitney, 1992). Elevated trait anxiety has also been associated with lower verbal STM performance (Darke, 1988).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Attentional bias, distractibility and short-term memory in anxiety

Lapointe

Blanchette

Duclos

et al. 2013

Anxiety, Stress & Coping

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Cognitive effects of anxiety have been amply documented. Anxiety has been linked with an attentional bias toward threat, distractibility, and reductions in short-term memory (STM) capacity. These three functions have rarely been investigated jointly and permeability may account for some of the effects documented. In this experiment, we examine these three cognitive functions using one verbal and one visuospatial task. In the irrelevant speech paradigm, participants had to remember strings of letters while irrelevant neutral or threatening speech was presented. In the visuospatial sandwich paradigm, participants were asked to remember sequences of visuospatial targets sometimes presented within irrelevant distracters. We examined the links between state anxiety, worry, and indices of attentional bias toward threat, distractibility from neutral stimuli, and STM capacity. Results show that state anxiety was uniquely linked with impairments in STM while worry was more particularly related to distractibility, independently from permeability between the different cognitive functions. Attentional bias toward threat was linked with variance common to both anxiety and worry. An examination of clinical and non-clinical subgroups suggests that subjective threat perception and attentional bias toward threat are features that are particularly characteristic of clinical levels of anxiety. Our findings confirm the important links between anxiety and basic cognitive functions.

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Subjectively Reported Anxiety as a Discriminator of Digit Span Performance

Cited by 16 publications

References 3 publications

Anxiety and working memory capacity: A meta-analysis and narrative review.

Anxiety and working memory capacity: A meta-analysis and narrative review.

The impact of anxiety upon cognition: perspectives from human threat of shock studies

Attentional bias, distractibility and short-term memory in anxiety

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