TY - JOUR
T1 - Reduced representations capacity in visual working memory in trait anxiety
AU - Qi, Senqing
AU - Chen, Jie
AU - Hitchman, Glenn
AU - Zeng, Qinghong
AU - Ding, Cody
AU - Li, Hong
AU - Hu, Weiping
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. NSFC81171289, NSFC30770727, NSFC31271110, and NSFC31470977 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2014/12
Y1 - 2014/12
N2 - Neural processes that support individual differences in trait anxiety and the amount of representations in visual-spatial working memory (WM) are currently unclear. We measured the contralateral delay activity (CDA) in a lateralized change detection task to explore this question. Different levels of memory load were varied within each block. Despite their unimpaired behavioral performance, individuals with high traitanxious(HTA) displayed several changes in the neuronal markers of the memory processes. The CDA amplitudes reached asymptote at loads of three and four items for HTA and low traitanxious(LTA) individuals, respectively. This result indicates that HTA individuals reach the upper limit of representation capacity with a smaller memory load than LTA individuals. Furthermore, the smaller CDA amplitudes in HTA individuals under high memory loads could be attributed to less contralateral cortical activity, which further indicates that HTA individuals are associated with reduced representations of taskrelevantitems in WM.
AB - Neural processes that support individual differences in trait anxiety and the amount of representations in visual-spatial working memory (WM) are currently unclear. We measured the contralateral delay activity (CDA) in a lateralized change detection task to explore this question. Different levels of memory load were varied within each block. Despite their unimpaired behavioral performance, individuals with high traitanxious(HTA) displayed several changes in the neuronal markers of the memory processes. The CDA amplitudes reached asymptote at loads of three and four items for HTA and low traitanxious(LTA) individuals, respectively. This result indicates that HTA individuals reach the upper limit of representation capacity with a smaller memory load than LTA individuals. Furthermore, the smaller CDA amplitudes in HTA individuals under high memory loads could be attributed to less contralateral cortical activity, which further indicates that HTA individuals are associated with reduced representations of taskrelevantitems in WM.
KW - Attentional control theory
KW - Contralateral delay activity (CDA)
KW - Trait anxiety
KW - Working memory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84907450988&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.08.010
DO - 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.08.010
M3 - Article
C2 - 25157423
AN - SCOPUS:84907450988
SN - 0301-0511
VL - 103
SP - 92
EP - 99
JO - Biological Psychology
JF - Biological Psychology
ER -