Anxiety, ability, and digit span performance.

Hodges, William F.; Durham, Robert L.

doi:10.1037/h0033732

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Although performance for the control participants did not change between assessments, participants in the ego-threat condition recalled fewer correct digit series during the second assessment. 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.…”

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

confidence: 77%

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

Moran

2016

Psychological Bulletin

544

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 Capacitysupporting

confidence: 77%

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

Moran

2016

Psychological Bulletin

544

339

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Threat of shock induces decrements in short-term memory accuracy on par with those seen in patients, whereas other induction methods and dispositionally anxious subjects show only capacity deficits, suggesting that threat of shock is a better model of anxious pathology. In general, performance impairments are typically associated with high state anxiety as opposed to high dispositional anxiety (Hodges and Durham, 1972; Hockey et al, 1986), suggesting that the experience of anxiety may be the primary mechanism of impairment rather than susceptibility to stress (Table 4). …”

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.

469

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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“…a relatively stable and continuous individual difference) (Spielberger, 1966). Experimental evidence suggests that stress and high levels of state anxiety may have a detrimental effect on short term memory, whereas trait anxiety has negligible effects (Hodges & Durham, 1972;Knox & Grippalid, 1970;Mueller, 1976). In spite of this, centrally acting anxiolytics like diazepam, have shown an overall deleterious effect on formnal testing of short term memory (Klienknecht & Donaldson, 1975), when a facilitative effect of the drug might have been expected in anxious subjects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of diazepam and oxprenolol on short term memory in individuals of high and low state anxiety.

Desai¹,

Taylor-Davies²,

Barnett³

1983

Brit J Clinical Pharma

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1 The effect of oral doses of diazepam (5 mg) and oxprenolol (80 mg) on short term memory of normal individuals stratified for 'state' anxiety levels has been investigated. 2 Normal student volunteers were stratified into high and low anxiety groups on the basis of responses to the Spielberger 'A-state' scale. Subjects were then randomly administered active drug or placebo and given a form of running memory test performed under a variety of conditions in which variable rate of item presentation and articulatory suppression were used.3 Diazepam significantly reduced the errors of recall in the running memory test in the high anxiety group and produced a distinct separation of response from the low anxiety group under the test conditions of slow item presentation with articulatory suppression. Oxprenolol had no effect on the short term memory test in either high or low anxiety groups in any experimental test situation. 4 These results are compared to previous work in which generally a deleterious effect of diazepam on short term memory in normal volunteers has been reported. The implications of these findings are further discussed in relationship to possible models of memory function.

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Anxiety, ability, and digit span performance.

Cited by 16 publications

References 16 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

The effects of diazepam and oxprenolol on short term memory in individuals of high and low state anxiety.

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