THE UTILIZATION OF WORKING-MEMORY BY WORRY

Sixty-eight undergraduate students were randomly allocated to one of f our task conditions and required to worry about a topic of importance to them while simultaneously performing the task to which they had bee n allocated. The tasks differed in their ability to interfere with wor rying. Generation of random letters was the only task to interfere sig nificantly with the ability to worry. There was a nonsignificant tende ncy for articulatory suppression to produce some interference with wor rying while visuo-spatial tasks did not affect the ability to worry. T here was no difference in results between self-reported worriers and n on-worriers. The results seem to indicate that worry primarily utilise s the phonological aspect of the central executive of working memory.