Anxious impairment: exploring executive functions and anxiety in college students

College students are tasked with juggling a variety of responsibilities. To manage these responsibilities college students must rely on their executive functioning (EF). Executive function refers to cognitive processes that are used to set goals, make plans to achieve those goals, and shift between tasks when necessary. A large portion of college students report experiencing anxiety and anxiety has been theorized to negatively impact cognitive performance, generally. This study sought to explore the impact of anxiety on inhibition and vigilance performance. Participants’ anxiety scores significantly correlated with the number of omission errors made on the inhibition task. Participants also made significantly different amounts of errors of omission on the vigilance task depending on which task was completed first. These findings may inform future research investigating the cognitive phenomena that contribute to differences in anxious and non-anxious people’s performance on tasks of vigilance and inhibition.