How Does Anxiety Affect Cognitive Control? Proactive and Reactive Control Under State Anxiety

Abstract

Cognitive control is a construct that prioritizes how we process stimuli and information and execute behaviors to flexibly and efficiently adapt to internal goals and external environmental changes. A recent theory, the Dual Mechanism of Control (DMC), distinguishes this phenomenon by two distinct cognitive control operations: proactive control and reactive control (Braver, 2012). Anxiety increases the allocation of attentional and working memory resources to threat-related stimuli, which impairs cognitive performance (Sarason, 1988), but additional work is needed to assess how anxiety impacts these two distinct forms of cognitive control. In this study, I examined how state anxiety affected proactive control, using the AX-continuous performance task (AX-CPT), and reactive control, using the classic Stroop task. The results showed that state anxiety inhibited proactive control in AX-CPT test, but increased reactive control in the Stroop task. Ultimately, by completing this study, we will better understand how anxiety impacts the proactive and reactive control.