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Abstract: Dual Competition Framework (DCF) posits that mild threat facilitates behavioral performance by influencing executive control functions and that anxiety strengthens this effect by enhancing threat's affective significance. A key aspect of executive control concerns the ability to inhibit one's dominant response tendencies. The effects of threat and anxiety on executive control function (s... read morepecifically, the efficiency of response inhibition) are examined in two studies. In Study 1, participants induced to be in an aroused anxious state demonstrated facilitated efficiency of executive control following briefly presented stimuli that were mildly threatening (i.e., fearful faces) relative to nonthreatening (i.e., neutral faces). No such effect occurred for participants in an aroused happy state. In Study 2, we assessed both the effects of manipulated state and individual differences in trait anxiety on executive control efficiency. Consistent with Study 1, among participants with effectively induced moods, an anxious but not a neutral state was associated with facilitated executive control efficiency following fearful relative to neutral faces. Unexpectedly, trait anxiety did not influence executive control efficiency on its own or in the context of threat. The findings are partially consistent with the predictions of DCF in that state--but not trait--anxiety improved executive function following low-level threat.
Thesis (M.S.)--Tufts University, 2011.
Submitted to the Dept. of Psychology.
Advisor: Heather Urry.
Committee: Lisa Shin, and Tracy Dennis.
Keyword: Psychology.read less
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