Trait anxiety, visuospatial processing, and working memory

Eysenck, Michael W.; Payne, Susanna; Derakshan, Nazanin

doi:10.1080/02699930500260245

Cited by 144 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The second assumption is that anxiety increases motivation to avoid its negative effects, which leads to increased cognitive effort and the recruitment of additional processing resources (Eysenck & Calvo, 1992). These two assumptions help to form the primary prediction of PET; that processing efficiency, which is an index of the individual resources invested to achieve a given level of performance, is negatively impacted more so than performance effectiveness, which is the level of performance indicated by a behavioural measure of a specified task (Eysenck, Payne, & Derakshan, 2005). Specifically, because anxiety draws on one's attentional resources, processing efficiency suffers more greatly than does performance effectiveness.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: A test of attentional control theory

Cocks

Jackson

Bishop

et al. 2015

Cognition and Emotion

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Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: A test of attentional control theory

Cocks

Jackson

Bishop

et al. 2015

Cognition and Emotion

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“…top-down attentional control (Eysenck, Payne, & Derakshan, 2005;Harris & Cumming, 2003). The second assumption relates to the important role of working memory capacity in successful task set reconfiguration.…”

Section: Ans Nsari D Deraksh Kshan N a A An N A A D Rich Icharmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of anxiety on task switching: Evidence from the mixed antisaccade task

Ansari

Derakshan

Richards

2008

Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

125

119

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There is behavioral evidence to show that anxiety is associated with an attentional bias for threat-related material (see Bar-Haim, Lamy, Pergamin, BakermansKranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007, for a review). Recent neuroimaging work has also shown that anxiety selectively facilitates early processing of threat and enhances distractibility to task-irrelevant stimuli. According to Bishop (2007; see also Bishop, Duncan, Brett, & Lawrence, 2004), anxiety is associated with enhanced amygdala activation and reduced recruitment of prefrontal cortical areas (especially the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex [DLPFC] and the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex [VLPFC]) that are heavily involved in top-down regulation of attention, especially when attentional focus is required for efficient task performance. Both behavioral and neuroimaging work has shown that anxiety is associated with adverse effects on cognitive performance, especially on tasks that require attentional focus. In an attempt to explain the role of attentional control in anxiety and cognitive performance, the attentional control theory of anxiety was put forward by Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, and Calvo (2007).The attentional control theory (Eysenck et al., 2007) is a major development of processing efficiency theory (Eysenck & Calvo, 1992). Based on Baddeley's (1986; see also Derryberry & Reed, 2002) working memory model, the theory claims that anxiety disrupts the balance b between what Corbetta and Shulman (2002) distinguished as the stimulus-driven (involved in bottom-up control, influenced by salient environmental stimuli) and the goaldirected (involved in top-down control, influenced by the current goal) systems. These two systems are generally thought to interact in their functioning (Pashler, Johnston, & Ruthruff, 2001), but anxiety is believed to increase the influence of the stimulus-driven system over the goaldirected processes, reducing attentional control.Predictions of the attentional control theory are based on a fundamental distinction by the processing efficiency theory (Eysenck & Calvo, 1992) between performance ef-f f fectiveness and performance efficiency. Effectiveness refers to an individual's competence in doing a task (measured by f response accuracy), and efficiency refers to the amount of processing resources invested in doing the task (measured by response latency). The theory predicts that anxiety has a greater impact on performance efficiency of tasks requiring the inhibition ("one's ability to deliberately inhibit dominant, automatic, or prepotent responses when necessary"; Miyake et al., 2000, p. 57) and/or the shifting d ("shifting back and g forth between multiple tasks"; Miyake et al., 2000, p. 55) functions of the central executive. In inhibition, attentional d control prevents attentional resources from being allocated to task-irrelevant stimuli, and in shifting, attentional control is used in a positive way to allocate attentional resources to execute the task relevant to the current goal.A general assumption of the atten...

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“…Eysenck, Payne, and Derakshan (2005) conducted a systematic investigation of the effects of anxiety on the different components of working memory using the Corsi Blocks Test. This task was performed concurrently with different secondary tasks, each utilizing a different component of working memory.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of state anxiety on performance using a task-switching paradigm: An investigation of attentional control theory

Derakshan

Smyth²,

Eysenck

2009

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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140

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Low-and high-anxious participants performed arithmetical tasks under task-switching or nontask-switching conditions. These tasks were low or high in complexity. The task on each trial was either explicitly cued or not cued. We assumed that demands on attentional control would be greater in the task-switching condition than in the nontask-switching condition, and would be greater with high-complexity tasks than with low-complexity ones. We also assumed that demands on attentional control would be greater when cues were absent rather than present. According to attentional control theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), anxiety impairs attentional control processes required to shift attention optimally within and between tasks. We predicted that there would be greater negative effects of high state anxiety in the task-switching condition than in the nontask-switching condition. Our theoretical predictions were supported, suggesting that state anxiety reduces attentional control.

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Trait anxiety, visuospatial processing, and working memory

Cited by 144 publications

References 17 publications

Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: A test of attentional control theory

Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: A test of attentional control theory

Effects of anxiety on task switching: Evidence from the mixed antisaccade task

Effects of state anxiety on performance using a task-switching paradigm: An investigation of attentional control theory

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