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Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study
Whether trait anxiety is associated with a general impairment of cognitive control is a matter of debate. This study investigated whether and how experimentally manipulated working memory (WM) load modulates the relation between trait anxiety and cognitive control. This question was investigated usi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219777/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25369121 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111791 |
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author | Qi, Senqing Zeng, Qinghong Luo, Yangmei Duan, Haijun Ding, Cody Hu, Weiping Li, Hong |
author_facet | Qi, Senqing Zeng, Qinghong Luo, Yangmei Duan, Haijun Ding, Cody Hu, Weiping Li, Hong |
author_sort | Qi, Senqing |
collection | PubMed |
description | Whether trait anxiety is associated with a general impairment of cognitive control is a matter of debate. This study investigated whether and how experimentally manipulated working memory (WM) load modulates the relation between trait anxiety and cognitive control. This question was investigated using a dual-task design in combination with event-related potentials. Participants were required to remember either one (low WM load) or six letters (high WM load) while performing a flanker task. Our results showed that a high WM load disrupted participants' ability to overcome distractor interference and this effect was exacerbated for the high trait-anxious (HTA) group. This exacerbation was reflected by larger interference effects (i.e., incongruent minus congruent) on reaction times (RTs) and N2 amplitudes for the HTA group than for the low trait-anxious group under high WM load. The two groups, however, did not differ in their ability to inhibit task-irrelevant distractors under low WM load, as indicated by both RTs and N2 amplitudes. These findings underscore the significance of WM-related cognitive demand in contributing to the presence (or absence) of a general cognitive control deficit in trait anxiety. Furthermore, our findings show that when limited WM resources are depleted by high WM load, HTA individuals exhibit less efficient recruitments of cognitive control required for the inhibition of distractors, therefore resulting in a greater degree of response conflict. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4219777 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42197772014-11-12 Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study Qi, Senqing Zeng, Qinghong Luo, Yangmei Duan, Haijun Ding, Cody Hu, Weiping Li, Hong PLoS One Research Article Whether trait anxiety is associated with a general impairment of cognitive control is a matter of debate. This study investigated whether and how experimentally manipulated working memory (WM) load modulates the relation between trait anxiety and cognitive control. This question was investigated using a dual-task design in combination with event-related potentials. Participants were required to remember either one (low WM load) or six letters (high WM load) while performing a flanker task. Our results showed that a high WM load disrupted participants' ability to overcome distractor interference and this effect was exacerbated for the high trait-anxious (HTA) group. This exacerbation was reflected by larger interference effects (i.e., incongruent minus congruent) on reaction times (RTs) and N2 amplitudes for the HTA group than for the low trait-anxious group under high WM load. The two groups, however, did not differ in their ability to inhibit task-irrelevant distractors under low WM load, as indicated by both RTs and N2 amplitudes. These findings underscore the significance of WM-related cognitive demand in contributing to the presence (or absence) of a general cognitive control deficit in trait anxiety. Furthermore, our findings show that when limited WM resources are depleted by high WM load, HTA individuals exhibit less efficient recruitments of cognitive control required for the inhibition of distractors, therefore resulting in a greater degree of response conflict. Public Library of Science 2014-11-04 /pmc/articles/PMC4219777/ /pubmed/25369121 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111791 Text en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration, which stipulates that, once placed in the public domain, this work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Qi, Senqing Zeng, Qinghong Luo, Yangmei Duan, Haijun Ding, Cody Hu, Weiping Li, Hong Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study |
title | Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study |
title_full | Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study |
title_fullStr | Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study |
title_short | Impact of Working Memory Load on Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety: An ERP Study |
title_sort | impact of working memory load on cognitive control in trait anxiety: an erp study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219777/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25369121 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111791 |
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