Attentional processing in individual anxiety: Electrocortical correlates of threat- and safety-related declarative memory formation

The ability to accurately detect and remember threatening stimuli is essential for adaptive behavior in potentially dangerous environments. While threat-related defensive processes are increasingly well understood, recent research has begun to emphasize complementary safety-related attention and learning mechanisms, processes especially relevant to the development and maintenance of pathological anxiety. Prior fear conditioning studies have identified a key role for late positive event-related potentials, particularly the P300 and late positive potential (LPP) in the formation of declarative memories related to threat and safety. However, the influence of individual differences in anxiety on these mechanisms remains insufficiently explored. In the present study, we examined how anxiety sensitivity, a transdiagnostic risk factor for anxiety-related pathologies, modulates attention and memory processes during declarative threat and safety learning. Using a subsequent memory paradigm, we recorded event-related potentials as participants learned associations between neutral faces and either an aversive outcome or safety. Stronger P300 and LPP amplitudes were found for remembered compared with forgotten items. Crucially, elevated anxiety sensitivity was associated with increased P300 and LPP amplitudes at the onset of both threat and safety cues, indicating heightened attentional allocation to both types of stimuli. Despite these amplified neural responses during memory encoding, higher anxiety sensitivity did not correspond to enhanced memory performance. These results suggest that, while individuals at heightened risk for anxiety-related psychopathology exhibit generalized hypervigilance, this increased attentional engagement does not necessarily translate into enhanced memory formation during intentional learning.