Effects of anxiety on task switching: Evidence from the mixed antisaccade task

ANSARI, T. L.; DERAKSHAN, N.; RICHARDS, A. · 2008 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/cabn.8.3.229

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Summary

This study investigates the impact of anxiety on task-switching performance, specifically testing predictions from the attentional control theory of anxiety. This theory posits that anxiety impairs cognitive tasks requiring the shifting function of working memory by disrupting the balance between stimulus-driven and goal-directed attentional systems. The researchers aimed to determine if high-anxious individuals would exhibit impaired efficiency in reconfiguring task sets compared to low-anxious individuals, using a mixed antisaccade paradigm. The experiment involved 59 participants who were categorized into low-anxious (LA) and high-anxious (HA) groups based on tertile splits of the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory. Participants performed eye-tracking tasks involving prosaccades (looking toward a stimulus) and antisaccades (looking away from a stimulus). The design included two block types: a single-task block, where trials of one type were presented consecutively, and a mixed-task block, where anti- and prosaccade trials were presented in random order, requiring participants to switch tasks. Performance was measured via saccade latency (efficiency) and error rates (effectiveness). The results revealed a significant interaction between anxiety group, task type, and block type. Low-anxious individuals demonstrated a "paradoxical improvement" in antisaccade performance, exhibiting significantly shorter latencies in the mixed-task block compared to the single-task block. This suggests that the external cueing of task goals in the mixed condition facilitated their performance. In contrast, high-anxious individuals did not show this improvement; their antisaccade latencies remained significantly longer in the mixed-task condition relative to the single-task condition, indicating a failure to benefit from the switching context. Error rates did not differ significantly between groups, suggesting that anxiety affected processing efficiency rather than effectiveness. These findings support the attentional control theory, indicating that anxiety interferes with the efficient allocation of attentional resources required for task switching. The study suggests that high-anxious individuals struggle to maintain or update task goals when switching is required, leading to reduced performance efficiency. This provides empirical evidence that anxiety specifically disrupts the shifting component of executive control, likely due to the overactivation of stimulus-driven processing systems at the expense of goal-directed control.

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• task switching