Effects of Anxiety on Attention-Based Tasks in a College Population

Previous literature suggests that trait anxiety may lead to diminished global processing, and therefore, a local processing bias (Basso et al., 1996), which may contribute to a narrowed scope of attention and impaired cognitive flexibility. Additionally, there is conflicting data on how anxiety interacts with performance on the Stroop task (e.g., Ursache & Cybele Raver, 2014). To understand this relationship, the authors used the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) to divide participants into groups based on their levels of anxiety. Specifically, the researchers explored the effects of state and trait anxiety on college students’ attention using the Navon task and the Stroop task. The Navon task was used to compare the performance of people with high and low trait anxiety, utilizing two t-tests to analyze local and global processing. Four groups were created for the Stroop task: high trait/low state, low state/high trait, high trait/high state, and low state/low trait, which were compared through an ANOVA. No statistically significant differences were found in performance on the Stroop and Navon tasks based on state or trait anxiety. This may be due to the age range of participants and the lack of clinical elevation of these factors. The findings suggest that moderate levels of anxiety may not impact attention drastically in a college population.