The impact of induced anxiety on affective response inhibition

Studying the effects of experimentally induced anxiety in healthy volunteers may increase our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning anxiety disorders. Prior work has shown that experimentally induced anxiety (via threat of unpredictable shock) improves accuracy at withholding a response on the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), and in separate studies improves accuracy to classify fearful faces, creating an affective bias. Integrating these findings, in this study participants (N=47) at a public science engagement event were recruited to explore the effects of experimentally induced anxiety on an affective version of the SART. On the basis of previous work, we hypothesised that we would see an increased accuracy at withholding a response to affectively congruent stimuli (i.e. increased accuracy at withholding a response to fearful “no-go” distractors) under threat of shock. Replicating previous findings, threat of shock slowed reaction time. However, contrary to predictions there was no evidence to suggest an interaction between induced anxiety and stimulus valence on accuracy. Indeed Bayesian analysis provided decisive evidence in favour of the null. We suggest that valence effects could emerge after processing durations longer than those allowed by the present task.