2-DIMENSIONAL ANXIETY - A CONFIRMATION USING A COMPUTERIZED NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING OF ATTENTIONAL PERFORMANCE

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of anxiety on attentio nal performance with neutral stimuli. It was set up as follows: a four fold comparison was made of trait anxiety and state anxiety. Sixty-two undergraduate students were included in the study, and four groups of subjects were set up by a median split of the scores obtained on the Spielberger Trait and State Anxiety Inventory (STAI): high trait-high state (N = 18); high trait-low state (N = 11); low trait low state (N = 23); low trait-high state (N = IO). A computerized battery of neurop sychological tests, the ACE battery, was administered to provide a mul tidimensional assessment of attention. The ACE battery comprises five tests which assess the following aspects of attention: ability to moni tor a routine task; temporal preparation; visual detection; memory spa n; visual spatial attention and memory. High state anxious subjects di splayed impairment in executive functions, manifested by a significant ly higher level of motor preparation in a simple reaction time (RT) ta sk and a speed accuracy trade-off in a divided attention task; high tr ait anxious subjects performed significantly better on the visual dete ction task. No trait x state interaction was found. It was concluded t hat high stare anxiety is associated with psychomotor alertness and hi gh trait anxiety with perceptual alertness. These two dimensions of ps ychometric anxiety seem to have effects on attention that are independ ent of one another and which should be analysed separately in the futu re.