Anxiety, Inhibition, Efficiency, and Effectiveness
An Investigation Using the Antisaccade Task
Abstract
Effects of anxiety on the antisaccade task were assessed. Performance effectiveness on this task (indexed by error rate) reflects a conflict between volitional and reflexive responses resolved by inhibitory processes (Hutton, S. B., & Ettinger, U. (2006). The antisaccade task as a research tool in psychopathology: A critical review. Psychophysiology, 43, 302–313). However, latency of the first correct saccade reflects processing efficiency (relationship between performance effectiveness and use of resources). In two experiments, high-anxious participants had longer correct antisaccade latencies than low-anxious participants and this effect was greater with threatening cues than positive or neutral ones. The high- and low-anxious groups did not differ in terms of error rate in the antisaccade task. No group differences were found in terms of latency or error rate in the prosaccade task. These results indicate that anxiety affects performance efficiency but not performance effectiveness. The findings are interpreted within the context of attentional control theory (Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion, 7 (2), 336–353).
References
(1986). Working memory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
(2007). Threat-related attentional bias in anxious and nonanxious individuals: A meta-analytic study. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 1–24.
(2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven activation in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 201–215.
(1978). Facial action coding system: A technique for the measurement of facial movement. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
(2005). Saccadic eye movements, schizotypy, and the role of neuroticism. Biological Psychology, 68, 61–78.
(1992). Anxiety: The cognitive perspective. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
(1997). Anxiety and cognition: A unified theory. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
(1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 409–434.
(2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion, 7, (2), 336–353.
(2003). DMDX: A windows display program with millisecond accuracy. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 35, 116–124.
(2000). Facial expressions of emotion: Are happy faces detected more efficiently? Cognition and Emotion, 14, 61–92.
(2001). Do threatening stimuli draw or hold visual attention in subclinical anxiety? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 681–700.
(2002). Attentional bias for threat: Evidence for delayed disengagement from emotional faces. Cognition and Emotion, 16, 355–379.
(1978). Primary and secondary saccades to goals defined by instructions. Vision Research, 18, 1279–1296.
(2004). Integration of competing saccade programs. Cognitive Brian Research, 19, 206–208.
(2006). The antisaccade task as a research tool in psychopathology: A critical review. Psychophysiology, 43, 302–313.
(2001). A controlled-attention view of working-memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 169–183.
(2004). Selective attention to threat in the dot probe paradigm: Differentiating vigilance and difficulty to disengage. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42, 1183–1192.
(2005). Time-course of attention for threatening pictures in high and low trait anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43, 1087–1098.
(2003). Eyegaze development system: Development manual. Fairfax VA, USA: LC Technologies Inc.
(1996). The emotional brain. New York: Simon & Schuster.
(1969). Control apparatus sensitive to eye movement. US Patent # 3, 462, 604.
(2004). Parallel programming of exogenous and endogenous components in the antisaccade task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57A, 475–498.
(2005). Cognitive vulnerability to emotional disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 167–195.
(1973). A remote oculometer permitting head movement (Report No. AMRL–TR–73–69). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH: Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory.
(2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
(2004). A goal activation approach to the study of executive function: An application to antisaccade tasks. Brain and Cognition, 56, 198–214.
(1993). Fear and anxiety as emotional phenomenon: Clinical phenomenology, evolutionary perspectives, and information-processing mechanisms. In , Handbook of emotions (pp. 511–536). New York: Guilford Press.
(2001). The face in the crowd revisited: A threat advantage with schematic stimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 381–396.
(2003). Why are antisaccades slower than prosaccades? A novel finding using a new paradigm. Neuroreport, 14, 151–155.
(1996). Computer facial animation. A.K. Peters Ltd.
(2007). Impaired action control in schizophrenia: The role of volitional saccade initiation. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1840–1848.
(1994). Prefrontal cognitive processes: Working memory and inhibition in the saccade task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 374–393.
(1983). Manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
(2004). Working memory capacity and the antisaccade task: Individual differences in voluntary saccade control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 1302–1321.
(2005). An introduction to R. R Development Core Team.
(1987). A muscle model for animating three-dimensional facial expression. Computer Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH ’87), 21, 17–24.
(2001). Anxiety and cognitive inhibition. Emotion, 1, 166–181.
(2001). Anxiety and attention to threatening pictures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology, 56A, 665–681.
