Effects of Trait and State Stress on Attention
Date
2001
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
Previous research has suggested that trait and state anxiety have an effect on attention, where individuals with high trait anxiety, in a high state anxiety condition are more likely to direct attention towards threat stimuli, whereas individuals with low trait anxiety, in a high state anxiety condition are able to direct attention away from threat stimuli; this suggests the existence of a protective bias in low trait anxiety individuals. The current study uses similar procedures to anxiety studies, in an undergraduate population, in order to examine whether or not stress and anxiety effect attention differently, in terms of the impact of state/trait interactions and multiple academic social, and trait stressors. Subjects were asked to perform a dichotic listening task, in which they had to ignore social, academic and neutral words, while shadowing a neutral passage. Subjects simultaneously completed a modified dot probe task, in order to measure attentional capacity. The results of the current study suggest that when stress is generalized, it has similar effects as anxiety on attention, with regard to state/trait interactions. When stress is specific, it does not show similar effects to anxiety on attention.