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Attentional control theory (ACT) was proposed to account for trait anxiety's effects on cognitive performance. According to ACT, impaired processing efficiency in high anxiety is mediated through inefficient executive processes that are needed for effective attentional control. Here we review the central assumptions and predictions of ACT within the context of more recent empirical evidence from neuroimaging studies. We then attempt to provide an account of ACT within a framework of the relevant cognitive processes and their associated neural mechanisms and networks, particularly the fronto-parietal, cingular-opercula, and default mode networks. Future research directions, including whether a neuroscience-informed model of ACT can provide a platform for novel neurocognitive intervention for anxiety, are also discussed.

This study investigated the characteristics of two distinct mechanisms of attention - stimulus enhancement and stimulus suppression - using an event-related potential (ERP) approach. Across three experiments, participants viewed sparse visual search arrays containing one target and one distractor. The main results of Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that whereas neural signals for stimuli that are not inherently salient could be directly suppressed without prior attentional enhancement, this was not the case for stimuli with motivational relevance (human faces). Experiment 3 showed that as task difficulty increased, so did the need for suppression of distractor stimuli. It also showed the preferential attentional enhancement of angry over neutral distractor faces, but only under conditions of high task difficulty, suggesting that the effects of distractor valence on attention are greatest when there are fewer available resources for distractor processing. The implications of these findings are considered in relation to contemporary theories of attention., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background and Objectives: While the potentially negative effects of pressure on skilled performance have been well studied in laboratory-based research, theoretically driven questions based on real-world performance data are lacking. Design: We aimed to test the predictions of the newly developed Attentional Control Theory: Sport (ACTS), using archived play-by-play data from the past seven seasons of the National Football League (American Football). Methods: An additive scoring system was developed to characterize the degree of pressure on 212,356 individual offensive plays and a Bayesian regression model was used to test the relationship between performance, pressure and preceding negative outcomes, as outlined in ACTS. Results: There was found to be a clear increase in the incidence of failures on high pressure plays (odds ratio = 1.20), and on plays immediately following a previous play failure (odds ratio = 1.09). Additionally, a combined interactive effect of previous failure and pressure indicated that the feedback effect of negative outcomes was greater when pressure was already high (odds ratio = 1.10), in line with the predictions of ACTS. Conclusions: These findings reveal the importance of exploring momentary changes in pressure in real-world sport settings, and the role of failure feedback in influencing the pressure-performance relationship.

Over the last three decades there has been an accumulation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) studies reporting that aberrant functional networks may underlie cognitive deficits and other symptoms across a range of psychiatric diagnoses. The use of pharmacological MRI and 1 H-Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy ( 1 H-MRS) has allowed researchers to investigate how changes in network dynamics are related to perturbed excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission in individuals with psychiatric conditions. More recently, changes in functional network dynamics and excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) neurotransmission have been linked to early childhood trauma, a major antecedents for psychiatric illness in adulthood. Here we review studies investigating whether perturbed network dynamics seen across psychiatric conditions are related to changes in E/I neurotransmission, and whether such changes could be linked to childhood trauma. Whilst there is currently a paucity of studies relating early traumatic experiences to altered E/I balance and network function, the research discussed here lead towards a plausible mechanistic hypothesis, linking early traumatic experiences to cognitive dysfunction and symptoms mediated by E/I neurotransmitter imbalances., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Anxiety is known to impair attentional control particularly when Task demands are high. Neuroimaging studies generally support these behavioral findings, reporting that anxiety is associated with increased (inefficient) activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during attentional control Tasks. However, less is known about the relationship between worry (part of the cognitive dimension of trait anxiety) and DLPFC/ACC function and connectivity during attentional control. In the present study, we sought to clarify this relationship., Methods: Forty-one participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a composite Faces and Scenes Task with high and low emotional interference conditions. Individual worry levels were assessed using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire., Results: During high but not low emotional interference, worry was associated with increased activity in ACC, DLPFC, insula, and inferior parietal cortex. During high emotional interference, worry was also associated with reduced functional connectivity between ACC and DLPFC. Trait anxiety was not associated with changes in DLPFC/ACC activity or connectivity during either Task condition., Conclusions: The results are consistent with cognitive models that propose worry competes for limited processing resources resulting in inefficient DLPFC and ACC activity when Tasks demands are high. Limitations of the present study and directions for future work are discussed., (© 2018 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

This Special Issue of Cognition and Emotion addresses one of the cardinal concerns of affective science, which is overlapping and distinctive features of anxiety and depression. A central finding in the study of anxiety and depression is that they are moderately highly correlated with each other. This leads us to the question: What is behind this co-occurrence? Possible explanations relate to poor discriminant validity of measures; both emotional states are associated with negative affect; stressful life events; impaired cognitive processes; they share a common biological/genetic diathesis. However, despite a set of common (nonspecific) features, anxiety and depression are clearly not identical emotional states. Differences between them might be best viewed, for example, through their heterogeneous and multi-layered nature, adaptive functions and relations with regulatory processes, positive affect, and motivation or complex cognitive processes. In this introduction we consider several approaches (e.g. functional approach; tripartite model and content-specificity hypothesis) to which most research in this Special Issue is relevant. In addition, we have asked contributors to this Special Issue to indicate how their own studies on comparisons between anxiety and depression and models on anxiety and depression move this area of research to more mature science with applicability.

Cognitive models posit that social anxiety is associated with biased attention to and interpretation of ambiguous social cues as threatening. We investigated attentional bias (selective early fixation on the eye region) to account for the tendency to distrust ambiguous smiling faces with non-happy eyes (interpretative bias). Eye movements and fixations were recorded while observers viewed video-clips displaying dynamic facial expressions. Low (LSA) and high (HSA) socially anxious undergraduates with clinical levels of anxiety judged expressers' trustworthiness. Social anxiety was unrelated to trustworthiness ratings for faces with congruent happy eyes and a smile, and for neutral expressions. However, social anxiety was associated with reduced trustworthiness rating for faces with an ambiguous smile, when the eyes slightly changed to neutrality, surprise, fear, or anger. Importantly, HSA observers looked earlier and longer at the eye region, whereas LSA observers preferentially looked at the smiling mouth region. This attentional bias in social anxiety generalizes to all the facial expressions, while the interpretative bias is specific for ambiguous faces. Such biases are adaptive, as they facilitate an early detection of expressive incongruences and the recognition of untrustworthy expressers (e.g., with fake smiles), with no false alarms when judging truly happy or neutral faces., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The present research explored the effects of selective impairment to the entorhinal cortex on the processes of familiarity and recollection. To achieve this objective, the performance of patient MR, who has a selective impairment of the left entorhinal cortex, was compared to that of age and IQ-matched controls. Four experiments tested participants' recognition memory for familiar and unfamiliar faces and words. In all experiments, participants studied lists of items and then completed an old/new recognition test in which they also made remember/know/guess judgements. A fifth experiment tested participants' priming associated with the familiarity process. MR had intact performance in both face recognition experiments as well as having intact performance in pseudoword recognition. Crucially, however, in the familiar word experiment, whilst MR performed similarly to control participants in terms of recollection, she showed a marked impairment in familiarity. Furthermore, she also demonstrated a reversed conceptual priming effect. MR's impairment is both material-specific and selective for previously encountered but not new verbal items (pseudowords). These findings provide the first clear evidence that selective impairment of the entorhinal cortex impairs the familiarity process for familiar verbal material whilst leaving recollection intact. These results suggest the entorhinal cortex does not have attributes reflective of both recollection and familiarity as previously assumed, but rather supports context-free long-term familiarity-based recognition memory., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

It has been suggested that writing auditorily presented words at encoding involves distinctive translation processes between visual and auditory domains, leading to the formation of distinctive memory traces at retrieval. This translation effect leads to higher levels of recognition than the writing of visually presented words, a non-translation effect. The present research investigated whether writing and the other translation effect of vocalisation (vocalising visually presented words) would be present in tests of recall, recognition memory and whether these effects are based on the subjective experience of remembering or knowing. Experiment 1 found a translation effect in the auditory domain in recall, as the translation effect of writing yielded higher recall than both non-translation effects of vocalisation and silently hearing. Experiment 2 found a translation effect in the visual domain in recognition, as the translation effect of vocalisation yielded higher recognition than both non-translation effects of writing and silently reading. This translation effect was attributable to the subjective experience of remembering rather than knowing. The present research therefore demonstrates the beneficial effect of translation in both recall and recognition, with the effect of vocalisation in recognition being based on rich episodic remembering.

Objectives: According to vigilance-avoidance theory, repressors have an avoidant interpretive bias, i.e., they interpret ambiguous self-relevant situations in a nonthreatening fashion. This study sought to demarcate the range of situations associated with avoidant interpretive bias in repressors., Design: Four groups of participants, representing the four combinations of low- and high-trait anxiety and defensiveness, were identified. Those low in trait anxiety and high in defensiveness were categorized as repressors., Methods: Participants (N = 163) rated their likelihood of making both threatening and nonthreatening interpretations of 32 ambiguous scenarios over four domains: social, intellectual, physical, and health. Half the scenarios were self-relevant and half were other relevant. Brief measures of state anxiety were taken after each likelihood rating., Results: Repressors displayed an avoidant interpretive bias for ambiguous threats in the social and intellectual domains but not the health or physical domains. This was due to repressors' low level of trait anxiety rather than their high defensiveness., Conclusions: Individuals high in trait anxiety are especially sensitive to situations involving social evaluation but not those characterized by danger to their health or physical well-being.

Low- and high-anxious participants performed arithmetical tasks under task-switching or nontask-switching conditions. These tasks were low or high in complexity. The task on each trial was either explicitly cued or not cued. We assumed that demands on attentional control would be greater in the task-switching condition than in the nontask-switching condition, and would be greater with high-complexity tasks than with low-complexity ones. We also assumed that demands on attentional control would be greater when cues were absent rather than present. According to attentional control theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), anxiety impairs attentional control processes required to shift attention optimally within and between tasks. We predicted that there would be greater negative effects of high state anxiety in the task-switching condition than in the nontask-switching condition. Our theoretical predictions were supported, suggesting that state anxiety reduces attentional control.

Effects of anxiety on the antisaccade task were assessed. Performance effectiveness on this task (indexed by error rate) reflects a conflict between volitional and reflexive responses resolved by inhibitory processes (Hutton, S. B., & Ettinger, U. (2006). The antisaccade task as a research tool in psychopathology: A critical review. Psychophysiology, 43, 302-313). However, latency of the first correct saccade reflects processing efficiency (relationship between performance effectiveness and use of resources). In two experiments, high-anxious participants had longer correct antisaccade latencies than low-anxious participants and this effect was greater with threatening cues than positive or neutral ones. The high- and low-anxious groups did not differ in terms of error rate in the antisaccade task. No group differences were found in terms of latency or error rate in the prosaccade task. These results indicate that anxiety affects performance efficiency but not performance effectiveness. The findings are interpreted within the context of attentional control theory (Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion, 7 (2), 336-353).

To investigate the processing of emotional words by covert attention, threat-related, positive, and neutral word primes were presented parafoveally (2.2 degrees away from fixation) for 150 ms, under gaze-contingent foveal masking, to prevent eye fixations. The primes were followed by a probe word in a lexical-decision task. In Experiment 1, results showed a parafoveal threat-anxiety superiority: Parafoveal prime threat words facilitated responses to probe threat words for high-anxiety individuals, in comparison with neutral and positive words, and relative to low-anxiety individuals. This reveals an advantage in threat processing by covert attention, without differences in overt attention. However, anxiety was also associated with greater familiarity with threat words, and the parafoveal priming effects were significantly reduced when familiarity was covaried out. To further examine the role of word knowledge, in Experiment 2, vocabulary and word familiarity were equated for low- and high-anxiety groups. In these conditions, the parafoveal threat-anxiety advantage disappeared. This suggests that the enhanced covert-attention effect depends on familiarity with words.

Attentional control theory is an approach to anxiety and cognition representing a major development of Eysenck and Calvo's (1992) processing efficiency theory. It is assumed that anxiety impairs efficient functioning of the goal-directed attentional system and increases the extent to which processing is influenced by the stimulus-driven attentional system. In addition to decreasing attentional control, anxiety increases attention to threat-related stimuli. Adverse effects of anxiety on processing efficiency depend on two central executive functions involving attentional control: inhibition and shifting. However, anxiety may not impair performance effectiveness (quality of performance) when it leads to the use of compensatory strategies (e.g., enhanced effort; increased use of processing resources). Directions for future research are discussed.

Cognitive psychology has made numerous contributions to clinical psychology, and these contributions are considered especially with reference to the anxiety disorders. It is argued that there are four major contributions that can be identified. First, the cognitive approach has led to the development of complex models showing the main cognitive processes and structures of relevance to an understanding of anxiety disorders. Second, controlled laboratory studies permit a more detailed investigation of cognitive biases in anxious patients than generally is feasible in more naturalistic settings. Third, the cognitive approach provides relevant evidence with respect to the issue of whether cognitive biases play a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Fourth, the enhanced understanding of the anxiety disorders that has arisen from the cognitive approach has had beneficial effects on therapeutic practice in a number of significant ways. In sum, it is claimed that clinical psychology has benefited considerably from cognitive theory and research., (Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol.)

Texts were presented sentence by sentence (Experiment 1) or word by word (Experiment 2) at a fixed rate to subjects high or low in test anxiety, under various conditions: no interference, concurrent articulatory suppression, and concurrent irrelevant speech (presented auditorily). High-anxiety subjects produced overt articulation more frequently than low-anxiety subjects, especially in the irrelevant speech condition. The most salient finding was an interaction between anxiety and interference on comprehension performance: under word-by-word-but not under sentence-by-sentence-presentation, anxious subjects showed poorer comprehension than non-anxious subjects in both conditions known to interfere with the articulatory loop (i.e. articulatory suppression, and irrelevant speech), but equivalent comprehension in the no interference condition. These findings suggest (a) that the articulatory loop has a special compensatory role for anxious individuals in reading comprehension, and (b) that the importance of this auxiliary mechanism is enhanced when other strategies, such as regressive fixations and control of reading speed, cannot be used.

In the 1st of 2 experiments, currently clinically anxious, recovered clinically anxious, and normal control subjects were presented with a mixture of unambiguous and ambiguous sentences; both threatening and nonthreatening interpretations were possible for the latter. A subsequent recognition-memory test indicated that the currently anxious subjects were more likely than normal control and recovered anxious subjects to interpret the ambiguous sentences in a threatening fashion rather than in a nonthreatening fashion. This suggests that the biased interpretation of ambiguity found in currently anxious subjects reflected their anxious mood state. A 2nd experiment established that the difference in interpretative processes between currently anxious and control subjects was not due to response bias and that the interpretative bias was a reasonably general one.

Revelle et al. have provided convincing evidence of interesting and replicable empirical relationships between the factors of time of day, caffeine administration, and impulsivity. Furthermore, their data suggest that differences between introverts and extraverts in time of day effects are due more to the impulsivity component of extraversion than to the sociability component. However, their preferred interpretation of the data in terms of a unidimensional arousal model is seriously deficient and should be replaced by a more complex conceptualization that emphasizes the existence of a number of qualitatively distinct activation states and that focuses on the effects of each of these activation states on the componential functions of information processing.

Subjects were divided into four groups based upon the possible combinations of high or low Extraversion and high or low General Activation. They learned two lists of paired associates in an A-B, A-Br paradigm, with a record being kept of the number of errors and the latency of correct responses. The groups were found to differ considerably more in terms of response latency than in terms of the probability of responding correctly. A number of the analyses indicated an interactive effect of Extraversion and General Activation on retrieval performance, in which high General Activation led to reduced response latencies for extraverts, but to slower latencies for introverts. This finding was interpreted with reference to arousal theory. Additional findings suggested that the poor performance of high arousal subjects was partially due to their tendency to take in information from dominant sources, a hypothesis suggested by Broadbent (1971).

Twenty-four subjects, 12 of whom were in the age range 18-30 years and 12 of whom were between 55-65 years, performed two semantic memory tasks. One task involved the recall of an instance from a designated category starting with a specified letter, and the second task required subjects to indicate whether a given work was or was not a member of a designated category (the recognition task). There was a differential effect of age on recall and recognition, the older subjects responding more slowly on the recognition task, but not on the recall task. The response times of the older subjects were less affected by the dominance of the to-be-retrieved information than were the younger subjects. These results suggested that subjects in the older age group may have retrieved information faster than the young subjects, but that they required longer to decide upon response.

Subjects low or high in activation, as measured by Thayer's Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List, participated in two semantic memory tasks, one involving speed of recall and the other speed of recognition. White noise at 80 db. re 20 muN/m-2 was presented on half the trials. There was an interaction between noise and activation under the recall condition only. High activation facilitated recall performance with high dominance items, but had a detrimental effect with low dominance items. The differential effect of arousal on recall and recognition was interpreted as indicating that arousal affected the retrieval component of recall. The findings with the dominance variable were interpreted in light of D.E. Broadbent's hypothesis that high arousal enhances the probability of sampling information from dominant sources.

Fifty-two subjects were assigned to one of four groups on the basis of scores on the Extraversion scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory and on the General Activation scale of the Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List. The subjects learned two lists composed of categorically related groups of words, with the number of categories and the number of words per category varied. Memory was probed by simultaneously presenting the subject with a category name and an item-position cue, and recording the recall latency. The major finding was that activation and extraversion interactively determined the recall latency for both category and item recall. The results were considered in light of arousal theory.

Subjects were divided into four groups on the basis of their scores on the extraversion scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory and the general activation scale of Thayer's Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List. A prose passage was presented to subjects who then attempted to recall it under strict instructions to avoid errors. There were significant interactions between activation and extraversion for the error data, and the phrase-correct data, with moderate levels of arousal (high activation extraverts and low activation introverts) being associated with the fewest errors and the most phrases correctly recalled. It was concluded that the study showed the importance of arousal to recall performance, possibly due to the effects of arousal on retrieval processes.

A complete understanding of human memory will necessarily involve consideration of the active processes involved at the time of learning and of the organization and nature of representation of information in long-term memory. In addition to process and structure, it is important for theory to indicate the ways in which stimulus-driven and conceptually driven processes interact with each other in the learning situation. Not surprisingly, no existent theory provides a detailed specification of all of these factors. However, there are a number of more specific theories which are successful in illuminating some of the component structures and processes. The working memory model proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and modified subsequently has shown how the earlier theoretical construct of the short-term store should be replaced with the notion of working memory. In essence, working memory is a system which is used both to process information and to permit the transient storage of information. It comprises a number of conceptually distinct, but functionally interdependent components. So far as long-term memory is concerned, there is evidence of a number of different kinds of representation. Of particular importance is the distinction between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, a distinction which has received support from the study of amnesic patients. Kosslyn has argued for a distinction between literal representation and propositional representation, whereas Tulving has distinguished between episodic and semantic memories. While Tulving's distinction is perhaps the best known, there is increasing evidence that episodic and semantic memory differ primarily in content rather than in process, and so the distinction may be of less theoretical value than was originally believed.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)