The Effect Of Working Memory Capacity On Attentional Control Under Pressure

How to control attention under high anxiety in competitive sports? It’s a serious problem that many athletes have to solve. Attentional control theory(ACT) proposed a new explanation for the relationship between anxiety and attentional control, that is,anxiety may impair top-down goal-direct system, and the process will bias toward bottom-up stimulus-driven system. In other words, anxiety will make individual more likely to be distracted. But previous studies on state anxiety didn’t get a same result.On the other hand, ACT implied the interference of anxiety on attentional control, but it didn’t propose how to avoid or reduce this kind of negative effect. Fortunately, the controlled attention view of working memory capacity provides a way. This view proposed that there is a strong correlation between working memory capacity(WMC)and attentional control, that is, high-WMC individuals may have stronger top-down goal-direct system. Thus, it implies that WMC is a moderator in the effect of anxiety impairs attentional control. What’s more, working memory training, a hot topic among various fields, provides a practical method to improve WMC and the ability of attentional control. The present study aims to 1) the influence of state anxiety on attentional control, 2) WMC, a possible moderator and 3) improve WMC and the ability of attentional control through one pre-experiment and two experiments.Experiment 1 examined the influence of state anxiety on attentional control again and, at the same time, examined the moderation of WMC. State anxiety was induced by limiting errors, limiting time, noise punishment and electric shock. 56 college students performed antisaccade task under low and high state anxiety. WMC was measured by operation span task(OSPAN), and participants were divided into high-WMC group and low-WMC group according to the score of OSPAN. Consist with hypothesis, anxiety impaired attentional control(there was longer correct antisaccade latency and higher percentage of incorrect saccades under high state anxiety). High-WMC was conducive to the attentional control, which partly consist with hypothesis. But what inconsist with hypothesis is that the moderating effect ofWMC was not supported. Experiment 1 implied that, on the one hand, state anxiety dose impair attentional control, but this kind of negative effect will emerge only under high enough state anxiety. On the other hand, high-WMC is beneficial to the attentional control, and this kind of positive effect won’t be affected by state anxiety.Experiment 2 attempted to improve WMC and the ability of attentional control using working memory training. 32 participants screened from experiment 1conducted adaptive n-back training(training group) and adaptive 1-back training(control group) respectively for 15 sessions. Consist with hypothesis, WMC and the ability of attentional control of training group was improved after training(for training group, score of OSPAN is significantly higher and correct antisaccade latency is significantly shorter than control group). It implied that we can improve the ability of attentional control by working memory training.Conclusion: 1) State anxiety impairs attentional control, but this kind of negative effect will emerge only under high enough state anxiety. It seems that the definition of anxiety in ACT needs to be refined. 2) High-WMC is beneficial to the attentional control, and this kind of positive effect won’t be affected by state anxiety. Perhaps athletes can improve their ability of attentional control steadily in various situations by improving their WMC. 3) The ability of attentional control and WMC can be improved by working memory training. Perhaps working memory training can be utilized as a kind of mental training method among athletes or sports teams.