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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Attentional Biases In Processing Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects Of State Anxiety, Trait Anxiety And Awareness, Mark Edwards
Attentional Biases In Processing Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects Of State Anxiety, Trait Anxiety And Awareness, Mark Edwards
Mark Edwards
The effect of state anxiety and trait anxiety on selective attention for threatening, neutral and happy schematic faces was investigated. A student sample was assigned to high trait anxious (HTA) or low trait anxious (LTA) groups using questionnaire scores and state anxiety was manipulated through the threat of electric shock. Stimulus materials were presented both outside (using a backward masking procedure) and within awareness. A novel version of a probe classification task was developed to assess performance when distracting information and the central task were spatially separated. For the masked trials, the LTA group were slower to identify the status …
Cognitive Trait Anxiety, Situational Stress, And Mental Effort Predict Shifting Efficiency: Implications For Attentional Control Theory, Elizabeth Edwards, Mark Edwards, Michael Lyvers
Cognitive Trait Anxiety, Situational Stress, And Mental Effort Predict Shifting Efficiency: Implications For Attentional Control Theory, Elizabeth Edwards, Mark Edwards, Michael Lyvers
Mark Edwards
Attentional control theory (ACT) predicts that trait anxiety and situational stress interact to impair performance on tasks that involve attentional shifting. The theory suggests that anxious individuals recruit additional effort to prevent shortfalls in performance effectiveness (accuracy), with deficits becoming evident in processing efficiency (the relationship between accuracy and time taken to perform the task). These assumptions, however, have not been systematically tested. The relationship between cognitive trait anxiety, situational stress, and mental effort in a shifting task (Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) was investigated in 90 participants. Cognitive trait anxiety was operationalized using questionnaire scores, situational stress was manipulated through …