title: The color of anxiety: neurobehavioral evidence for distraction by perceptually salient stimuli in anxiety.
abstract: Anxiety is reliably associated with an attentional bias favoring threatening information which is thought to be a key mechanism in the etiology and maintenance of anxious pathology. However, whether and how anxiety is related to attentional capture at a more basic level (i.e., in the absence of threat) is less well understood. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the association between anxiety and attentional capture in the context of visually salient, yet affectively neutral, stimuli. Specifically, we used a visual search task in which participants were required to locate a target while ignoring a salient distractor stimulus. A total of 122 undergraduates-half of whom were assigned to a state-anxiety induction-completed this task while event-related potentials were recorded and also completed self-report measures of trait and state anxiety. The results revealed that trait anxiety, but not state anxiety, was associated with impaired attentional control in the presence of a salient distractor. That is, behavioral slowing and the N2pc event-related potential-a neural measure of attentional selection-were enhanced for trait-anxious participants when the distractor was proximate to the target and required controlled attention in order to inhibit it. These findings extend previous work by providing evidence from multiple levels of analysis that attentional aberrations in anxiety reflect broad deficits in inhibiting distracting stimuli and are not limited to threat-relevant contexts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, Psychology Building, 110-B, East Lansing, MI, 48823, USA.
authors.forename: Tim P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Moran
authors.forename: Jason S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Moser
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
references.citation: Percept Psychophys. 1991 Aug;50(2):184-93
references.pmid: 1945740
references.citation: J Abnorm Psychol. 1986 Feb;95(1):15-20
references.pmid: 3700842
references.citation: Exp Psychol. 2009;56(1):48-55
references.pmid: 19261578
references.citation: J Pers Soc Psychol. 1990 Dec;59(6):1230-7
references.pmid: 2283589
references.citation: Annu Rev Neurosci. 1988;11:137-56
references.pmid: 3284439
references.citation: J Abnorm Psychol. 2009 Feb;118(1):28-33
references.pmid: 19222311
references.citation: Emotion. 2007 May;7(2):336-53
references.pmid: 17516812
references.citation: Emotion. 2012 Apr;12(2):213-6
references.pmid: 22059521
references.citation: Neuropsychologia. 2007 Jan 7;45(1):174-94
references.pmid: 16854439
references.citation: Front Hum Neurosci. 2013 Mar 04;7:58
references.pmid: 23459454
references.citation: Trends Neurosci. 2012 Sep;35(9):527-35
references.pmid: 22658924
references.citation: Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2010 Mar;5(1):29-38
references.pmid: 19966328
references.citation: Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1996 Sep;99(3):225-34
references.pmid: 8862112
references.citation: J Abnorm Psychol. 2002 Feb;111(1):107-23
references.pmid: 11866165
references.citation: J Cogn Neurosci. 2006 Apr;18(4):604-13
references.pmid: 16768363
references.citation: Cogn Psychol. 1997 Jun;33(1):64-87
references.pmid: 9212722
references.citation: Psychophysiology. 1994 May;31(3):291-308
references.pmid: 8008793
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2003 Feb;29(1):121-38
references.pmid: 12669752
references.citation: Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2001 Mar;11(1):147-56
references.pmid: 11240117
references.citation: Neuron. 2008 May 8;58(3):306-24
references.pmid: 18466742
references.citation: Annu Rev Psychol. 2011;62:73-101
references.pmid: 19575619
references.citation: J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2013 Aug;19(7):835-40
references.pmid: 23803518
references.citation: Science. 1985 Aug 23;229(4715):782-4
references.pmid: 4023713
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 1994 Oct;20(5):1000-14
references.pmid: 7964526
references.citation: Nature. 1999 Aug 26;400(6747):867-9
references.pmid: 10476964
references.citation: Psychon Bull Rev. 2006 Feb;13(1):132-8
references.pmid: 16724780
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2001 Apr;27(2):303-17
references.pmid: 11318049
references.citation: Percept Psychophys. 1992 Jun;51(6):599-606
references.pmid: 1620571
references.citation: Clin Psychol Rev. 2004 Nov;24(7):827-56
references.pmid: 15501558
references.citation: Behav Res Ther. 2004 Oct;42(10):1183-92
references.pmid: 15350857
references.citation: Depress Anxiety. 2008;25(6):E1-E10
references.pmid: 17565734
references.citation: Psychol Bull. 2007 Jan;133(1):1-24
references.pmid: 17201568
references.citation: Acta Psychol (Amst). 2010 Oct;135(2):77-99
references.pmid: 20507828
references.citation: Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1983 Apr;55(4):468-84
references.pmid: 6187540