ArticleBiological psychology2017
Distractibility as a precursor to anxiety: Preexisting attentional control deficits predict subsequent autonomic arousal during anxiety.
Article in Biological psychology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Neuroticism heterogeneity through item-level associations in resting-state functional connectivity.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Assessment of Attentional Processes in Patients with Anxiety-Depressive Disorders Using Virtual Reality.Journal of personalized medicine · 2021Article
- Effortful control moderates relationships between worry and symptoms of depression and anxious arousal.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2021Article
- Parental Demandingness and Executive Functioning in Predicting Anxiety among Children in a Longitudinal Community Study.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2020Article
- Virtual Reality for Health Care Professionals During a Pandemic: A Pilot Program.Journal of primary care & community healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Low attentional control (AC) and high anxiety are closely linked. Researchers often presume that high anxiety reduces AC; however, the reverse causal possibility - that low AC increases anxiety - is equally plausible. We addressed this question in people with elevated trait anxiety by evaluating the temporal precedence of the AC-anxiety association. We tested whether autonomic arousal (electrodermal activity) and subjective anxiety elicited by an anxiety induction were associated more strongly with AC measured either pre-induction (N=40) or post-induction (N=38). Low AC was indexed by distractibility during a visual search task requiring attentional inhibition of emotionally neutral distractors. Higher distractibility predicted higher autonomic activation but not higher increases in self-reported anxiety. Critically, this AC-anxiety association occurred for pre-induction but not post-induction AC. The results suggest that low AC may heighten subsequent anxious arousal. By implication, treatment interventions should specifically enhance AC to alleviate anxiety.
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