On the relationship between anxiety and error monitoring: a meta-analysis and conceptual framework

Abstract

Research involving event-related brain potentials has revealed that anxiety is associated with enhanced error monitoring, as reflected in increased amplitude of the error-related negativity (ERN). The nature of the relationship between anxiety and error monitoring is unclear, however. Through meta-analysis and a critical review of the literature, we argue that anxious apprehension/worry is the dimension of anxiety most closely associated with error monitoring. Although, overall, anxiety demonstrated a robust, “small-to-medium” relationship with enhanced ERN (r = −0.25), studies employing measures of anxious apprehension show a threefold greater effect size estimate (r = −0.35) than those utilizing other measures of anxiety (r = −0.09). Our conceptual framework helps explain this more specific relationship between anxiety and enhanced ERN and delineates the unique roles of worry, conflict processing, and modes of cognitive control. Collectively, our analysis suggests that enhanced ERN in anxiety results from the interplay of a decrease in processes supporting active goal maintenance and a compensatory increase in processes dedicated to transient reactivation of task goals on an as-needed basis when salient events (i.e., errors) occur.

Evaluative priming reveals dissociable effects of cognitive versus physiological anxiety on action monitoring.

“…As such, these new behavioural results (Experiment 1) provide further evidence for a modulatory role of anxious apprehension (worry), but not arousal, onto early stages of action monitoring, as previously advocated by Moser et al (2013). These authors put forward the assumption that overactive early error monitoring processes seen in anxiety (at the level of the ERN component) primarily stem from worry.…”

“…More recently, a series of studies by Pourtois (2012, 2013) went beyond earlier findings by showing that dedicated internal monitoring systems enable individuals to rapidly tag 6 tension elicited by clear and current threats. Noteworthy, Moser et al (2013) provided evidence for an association between anxious apprehension (worry) and an enhanced ERN component, with no such link found with anxious arousal, suggesting that worry (but not arousal) might actually play a predominant role in abnormal early error monitoring processes typically observed in high anxious individuals Koban & Pourtois, 2014). An older dominant model accounting for modulatory effects of anxiety on cognition stated that worry might reflect the occupation (or hijacking) of resources that would otherwise be allocated to the control of attention (M. W. Eysenck, 1979).…”

“…In Experiment 1, we used the task previously validated by Aarts et al (2012Aarts et al ( , 2013 in a large sample of healthy adult participants, but we measured not only trait anxiety broadly speaking (using the STAI), but also levels of worry and arousal, separately. Following standard practice (Moser et al, 2013), the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990) was used in combination with the subscale Anxious Arousal of the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ-AA; Clark & Watson, 1991), to titrate worry and arousal, respectively.…”

Evidence for a general performance‐monitoring system in the human brain

“…Electroencephalographic (EEG) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) studies have identified evoked responses elicited by errors in motor tasks (error‐related negativity, ERN, Ne) (Falkenstein, Hohnsbein, & Hoormann, 1995; Holroyd & Coles, 2002; Keil, Weisz, Paul‐Jordanov, & Wienbruch, 2010) as well as by external feedback (Feedback‐Related Negativity, FRN) (Doñamayor, Marco‐Pallarés, Heldmann, Schoenfeld, & Münte, 2011; Doñamayor, Schoenfeld, & Münte, 2012b; Gehring & Willoughby, 2002; Miltner, Braun, & Coles, 1997). These neural signals appear consistently across different tasks (Meyer, Riesel, & Hajcak Proudfit, 2013; Olvet & Hajcak, 2009), are indicative of post‐error behavioral adjustments (Holroyd & Coles, 2002; Nieuwenhuis et al, 2002), and are known to be altered in a number of neuropsychiatric conditions (Gründler, Cavanagh, Figueroa, Frank, & Allen, 2009; Gu, Huang, & Luo, 2010; Morris, Heerey, Gold, & Holroyd, 2008; Morris, Holroyd, Mann‐Wrobel, & Gold, 2011; Moser, Moran, Schroder, Donnellan, & Yeung, 2013; Proudfit, 2015; Weinberg, Klein, & Hajcak, 2012). …”

Brain and Behavior – Hypothalamus and Limbic System: The Neurobiology of Emotions

“…1 conveys that in its specimen we have opened the lateral ventricle to show you the hippocampus as it lies on the floor of the inferior horn. It bulges here is the hippocampus toward the posterior end fibers emerging that will form the fornix and will swing over the thalamus to reach the mammillary bodies of the hypothalamus [9]. In it the specimen, we have approached the hippocampus from a medial approach and we have taken away part of the temporal cortex here the lateral ventricle is right here and lying on the floor of the lateral ventricle is the hippocampus.…”