The Relationship of Anxiety and Stress With Working Memory Performance in a Large Non-depressed Sample

: Karolina M. Lukasik, Otto Waris, Anna Soveri, Minna Lehtonen, Matti Laine

Publisher: FRONTIERS MEDIA SA

: 2019

: Frontiers in Psychology

: FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY

: FRONT PSYCHOL

: ARTN 4

: 10

: 1

: 9

: 1664-1078

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00004

: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00004/full

: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/39178068

Clinical anxiety and acute stress caused by major life events have well-documented detrimental effects on cognitive processes, such as working memory (WM). However, less is known about the relationships of state anxiety or everyday stress with WM performance in non-clinical populations. We investigated the associations between these two factors and three WM composites (verbal WM, visuospatial WM, and n-back updating performance) in a large online sample of non-depressed US American adults. We found a trend for a negative association between WM performance and anxiety, but not with stress. Thus, WM performance appears rather robust against normal variation in anxiety and everyday stress.

Lukasik_et_al_fpsyg-10-00004.pdf