Affective attention under cognitive load: Reduced emotional biases but emergent anxiety-related costs to inhibitory control

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Joseph eTaylor¹  Nick eBerggren¹  Anne eRichards¹  Nazanin eDerakshan² 

[1] Birkbeck University of London;University of Oxford;

关键词: visual attention;    antisaccade task;    Cognitive Load;    trait anxiety;    threat processing;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnhum.2013.00188

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Trait anxiety is associated with deficits in attentional control, particularly in the ability to inhibit prepotent responses. Here, we investigated this effect while varying the level of cognitive load in a modified antisaccade task that employed emotional facial expressions (neutral, happy, and angry) as targets. Load was manipulated using a secondary auditory task requiring recognition of tones (low load), or recognition of specific tone pitch (high load). Results showed that load increased antisaccade latencies on trials where gaze towards face stimuli should be inhibited. This effect was exacerbated for high anxious individuals. Emotional expression also modulated task performance on antisaccade trials for both high and low anxious participants under low cognitive load, but did not influence performance under high load. Collectively, results a) suggest that individuals reporting high levels of anxiety are particularly vulnerable to the effects of cognitive load on inhibition, and b) support recent evidence that loading cognitive processes can reduce emotional influences on attention and cognition.

【 授权许可】

Unknown