Trial reportPloS one2019
I'm going to fail! Acute cognitive performance anxiety increases threat-interference and impairs WM performance.
Trial report in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Investigating the Impact of Guided Imagery on Stress, Brain Functions, and Attention: A Randomized Trial.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Trial
- When Threat Comes from Within: First Evidence that Anticipatory Emotion Impairs Working Memory.Affective science · 2026Article
- Article
- Neural evidence of task efficacy affecting cognitive control in test-anxious individuals.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- The effects of happiness and hope on executive functions.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Perceived memory reliability and music performance anxiety in Chinese musicians: a mediation and latent profile approach.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Theta-gamma-coupling as predictor of working memory performance in young and elderly healthy people.Molecular brain · 2024Article
- Pupillometry and autonomic nervous system responses to cognitive load and false feedback: an unsupervised machine learning approach.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Cognitive assessment during awake brain tumor surgery.Acta neurochirurgica · 2023Article
- Article
- Repeated stage exposure reduces music performance anxiety.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Article
- Association between spatial working memory and Re-experiencing symptoms in PTSD.Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry · 2022Article
- The potential effect mechanism of high-fat and high-carbohydrate diet-induced obesity on anxiety and offspring of zebrafish.Eating and weight disorders : EWD · 2022Article
- Testing times: the association of intolerance of uncertainty and metacognitive beliefs to test anxiety in college students.BMC psychology · 2022Article
- The magnitude and effect of work-life imbalance on cognition and affective range among the non-western population: A study from Muscat.PloS one · 2022Article
- Neutral and threatening distracter word stimuli are unnecessarily stored in working memory but do not differ in their degree of working memory storage.Biological psychology · 2021Article
- Toward Predicting Human Performance Outcomes From Wearable Technologies: A Computational Modeling Approach.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
- Facing Racism and Sexism in Science by Fighting Against Social Implicit Bias: A Latina and Black Woman's Perspective.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Normative and Equated Data of the Original and Basic Versions of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment among Community Dwelling Saudi Arabians.Behavioural neurology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Stress can impair cognitive performance, as commonly observed in cognitive performance anxiety (CPA; e.g., test anxiety). Cognitive theories indicate that stress impairs performance by increasing attention to negative thoughts, a phenomenon also known as threat-interference. These theories are mainly supported by findings related to self-report measures of threat-interference or trait anxiety. Our main aim was to test, for the first time in a single study, the hypotheses that acute CPA-related stress negatively affects both working memory (WM) performance and objectively assessed threat-interference during performance. In addition, we aimed to assess the validity of a new stress-induction procedure that was developed to induce acute CPA. Eighty-six females were randomly assigned to a CPA-related stress group (n = 45) or a control group. WM performance and threat-interference were assessed with an n-back task (2-back and 3-back memory loads), using CPA-related words as distracters. The stress group showed higher state anxiety and slower WM performance. Both effects were moderated by trait CPA: the effects were stronger for individuals with higher trait CPA. Finally, trait CPA moderated the effect of stress on threat-interference during higher cognitive load: individuals with higher trait CPA in the stress group showed higher threat-interference. We conclude that acute CPA increases threat-interference and impairs WM performance, especially in vulnerable individuals. The role of threat-interference, cognitive load, and trait anxiety should be taken into account in future research. Finally, our method (combining our stressor and modified n-back task) is effective for studying stress-cognition interactions in CPA.
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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.