I'm going to fail! Acute cognitive performance anxiety increases threat-interference and impairs WM performance.

ABSTRACT: Stress can impair cognitive performance, as commonly observed in cognitive performance anxiety (CPA; e.g., test anxiety). Cognitive theories indicate that stress impairs performance by increasing attention to negative thoughts, a phenomenon also known as threat-interference. These theories are mainly supported by findings related to self-report measures of threat-interference or trait anxiety. Our main aim was to test, for the first time in a single study, the hypotheses that acute CPA-related stress negatively affects both working memory (WM) performance and objectively assessed threat-interference during performance. In addition, we aimed to assess the validity of a new stress-induction procedure that was developed to induce acute CPA. Eighty-six females were randomly assigned to a CPA-r

SUBMITTER: Angelidis A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6366876 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature