ArticleJournal of abnormal psychology2014
Are attentional control resources reduced by worry in generalized anxiety disorder?
Article in Journal of abnormal psychology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Rumination and postnatal depression: A systematic review and a cognitive model.Behaviour research and therapy · 2016Pooled it
- Impaired disengagement from worry: Dissociating the impacts of valence and internally-directed attention.Behaviour research and therapy · 2023Trial
- Trial
- The power of positive thinking: Pathological worry is reduced by thought replacement in Generalized Anxiety Disorder.Behaviour research and therapy · 2016Trial
- Randomness as a behavioral marker of attentional control during the attention training technique and its neural correlates.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- The Contrast Avoidance Model: Conclusion and synthesis of new research in the special issue.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2024Article
- Neuropsychology of Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Clinical Setting: A Systematic Evaluation.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Social Connectedness and Negative Emotion Modulation: Social Media Use for Coping Among College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Emerging adulthood (Print) · 2023Article
- Contrast avoidance predicts and mediates the effect of trait worry on problem-solving impairment.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2023Article
- A d factor? Understanding trait distractibility and its relationships with ADHD symptomatology and hyperfocus.PloS one · 2023Article
- Dimensions of inattention: Cognitive, behavioral, and affective consequences.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The role of attention control in complex real-world tasks.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2022Review
- A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of Goal Management Training in Canadian Military Members, Veterans, and Public Safety Personnel Experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Cognitive Resilience to Psychological Stress in Military Personnel.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Attentional Control Moderates the Relations between Intolerance of Uncertainty and Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Symptoms.Cognitive therapy and research · 2021Article
- Stress-Buffering Role of Social Support during COVID-19.Family process · 2021Article
- Within-person increase in pathological worry predicts future depletion of unique executive functioning domains.Psychological medicine · 2021Article
- Working memory updating training reduces state repetitive negative thinking: Proof-of-concept for a novel cognitive control training.Behaviour research and therapy · 2021Article
- The momentary benefits of positive events for individuals with elevated social anxiety.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2021Article
- Reduced top-down attentional control in adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder.Brain and behavior · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
This is the first study to examine attentional control capacities in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD is characterized by uncontrollable worry. Individuals diagnosed with GAD and healthy participants (HPs) performed a random key-pressing task while thinking about a worrisome or a positive future event, to assess the extent to which attentional control resources are used by worry. Attentional control was also assessed when participants were not instructed to think about a specific topic using the N-back task, which varies in task difficulty, and therefore is sensitive to subtle differences in ability to handle increasing demands on attentional control within the same paradigm. GAD participants (but not HPs) were less random while worrying than thinking about a positive event during the key-pressing task, suggesting that worry consumed more attentional control resources in this population. During the N-Back task, GAD participants performed worse than HPs during the high load conditions only, indicating greater difficulty in sustaining focus on conditions requiring a higher degree of attentional control, even without concurrent task activity. Poor attentional control might underpin the difficulty of GAD individuals to stop worrying and switch to thinking more benign information. Further research could investigate whether worry consumes attentional control resources in other psychological disorders with high rates of worry (e.g., panic disorder, psychosis), as well as the extent to which attentional control is used by other forms of repetitive thinking, such as depressive rumination.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.