The impact of induced anxiety on affective response inhibition

Studying the effects of experimentally induced anxiety in healthy volunteers may increase our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning anxiety disorders. Prior work has shown that experimentally induced anxiety (via threat of unpredictable shock) improves accuracy at withholding a response on the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), and in separate studies improves accuracy to classify fearful faces, creating an affective bias. Integrating these findings, in this study, 47 participants at a public science engagement event were recruited to explore the effects of experimentally induced anxiety on an affective version of the SART. On the basis of previous work, we hypothesised that we would see an increased accuracy at withholding a response to affectively congruent stimuli (i.e. increased accuracy at withholding a response to fearful “no-go” distractors under threat of shock). Response accuracy on “no-go” trials was analysed using a two-way ANOVA with factors valence (happy / sad) and condition (threat / safe). Reaction time analysis was performed on “go” stimuli. Prior to analysis, a square root transform was applied to reaction time data as it was not normally distributed. Reaction time to targets (“go” stimuli) was analysed using a two-way ANOVA with factors valence (happy / sad) and condition (threat / safe). Post hoc analyses were run to investigate the effect of STAI anxiety scores and blood alcohol concentration on performance. Pearson’s r correlations between symptom measures (STAI State and Trait scores, and blood alcohol concentration) and reaction time / accuracy data were run.