Anxiety promotes memory for mood-congruent faces but does not alter loss aversion.
Pathological anxiety is associated with disrupted cognitive processing, including working memory and decision-making. In healthy individuals, experimentally-induced state anxiety or high trait anxiety often results in the deployment of adaptive harm-avoidant behaviours. However, how these processes affect cognition is largely unknown. To investigate this question, we implemented a translational within-subjects anxiety induction, threat of shock, in healthy participants reporting a wide range of trait anxiety scores. Participants completed a gambling task, embedded within an emotional working memory task, with some blocks under unpredictable threat and others safe from shock. Relative to the safe condition, threat of shock improved recall of threat-congruent (fearful) face location, especially in highly trait anxious participants. This suggests that threat boosts working memory for mood-congruent stimuli in vulnerable individuals, mirroring memory biases in clinical anxiety. By contrast, Bayesian analysis indicated that gambling decisions were better explained by models that did not include threat or treat anxiety, suggesting that: (i) higher-level executive functions are robust to these anxiety manipulations; and (ii) decreased risk-taking may be specific to pathological anxiety. These findings provide insight into the complex interactions between trait anxiety, acute state anxiety and cognition, and may help understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying adaptive anxiety.
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.|Affective Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, UK.
Caroline J
CJ
Charpentier
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.|Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, WC1E 7HB.
Chandni
C
Hindocha
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
Jonathan P
JP
Roiser
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
Oliver J
OJ
Robinson
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005715:Gambling; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D011930:Reaction Time; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult