The Effect Of Emotion Inhibition Of Individuals With Different Types Of Anxiety

In face of complex cognitive tasks, people can actively coordinate and control various cognitive processes in order to complete the tasks, we calls this general control mechanism executive function (EF). EF including attention, working memory, inhibition, solving the conflict, decision-making and so on, inhibition process is the core part of EF. Emotion is a kind of individual experience which is accompanied by us moment by moment, and emotion can influence individuals’cognitive processing and their conflict resolving. The effects of emotion on EF may be various on different individuals. In this study, we examined how the emotion influences cognition/response inhibition for state/trait anxiety individuals.Three studies including a total of seven experiments were carried out.In study1, the effects of different emotions on cognition inhibition for state anxiety participants was the focus analysis. Two experiments were included, experiment1examined the availability of mental arithmetic for inducing state anxiety. In experiment2,60moderate arousal positive, negative and neutral pictures separately were selected from Chinese Affective Pictures System (CAPS), these pictures were presented before Stroop tasks randomly to investigate how the emotion influence the cognition inhibition of state anxiety participants. The results of study1were shown as follows:(1) The scores on the state anxiety questionnaire were higher after the mental arithmetic procedure.(2) The Stroop effect was stronger after moderate arousal positive/negative emotion for state anxiety and normal participants.Thouth the results of study1, we can conclude that mental arithmetic can induce state anxiety; moderate arousal positive and negative emotion can impair cognition inhibition of state anxiety and normal participants.In study2, we examined the effects of different emotions on cognition inhibition for trait anxiety subjects. There were3experiments, we screened30trait anxiety and normal participants separately by questionnaire survey,48pictures selected from CAPS were presented before the Stroop tasks as same as experiment2, two groups of normal and trait anxiety participants took part in experiment4, we examined the effects of different emotion on cognition inhibition of normal and trait anxiety participants. In experiment5, ERPs which provide a measure of brain activity with millisecond temporal accuracy were used to probe how the high and low arousal negative emotions affect cognition inhibition for normal and trait anxiety participants. We found that:(1) The Stroop effect was bigger in trait anxiety participants than in normal participants.(2)The Stroop effect was stronger after moderate arousal positive and negative emotion for all participants.(3)The response time in the Stroop task after high arousal negative emotion was faster than after low arousal and non emotion, in the earlier state of target processing, the target N1-P2amplitude was larger after high arousal negative emotion, but smaller for trait anxiety participants than for normal participants, the N2latency was longer in inconsistency than consistency condition, implying remarkable Stroop effect, what is more, the N2amplitude was larger after high arousal negative emotion than after low arousal and non emotion.The results of study2showed that moderate arousal positive and negative emotion can impair cognition inhibition of trait anxiety and normal participants; high arousal negative emotion can prove cognition inhibition of trait anxiety and normal participants which exist in the early attention stage and cognition inhibition detection stage; the cognition inhibition was impaired for trait anxiety participants which happened in the early target processing stage.In study3, the effects of different emotions on response inhibition for trait anxiety subjects was examined. Two experiments made up study3, behavior inhibition was induced by two choice Oddball paradigm in experiment6and experiment7, in experiment6, moderate arousal emotion pictures selected from CAPS were presented before two choice Oddball tasks to explore the effects of different emotion on response inhibition for normal and trait anxiety participants. In experiment7, ERPs were recorded to explore how the high and low arousal negative emotions affect the response inhibition of normal and trait anxiety’participants. The main results obtained from study3were shown as follows:(1)Two choice Oddball paradigm induced response inhibition successfully, the response time in Oddball task was faster for trait anxiety participants than for normal participants, the Oddball effect was smaller after negative emotion for trait anxiety participants.(2)The P2、N2and P3amplitude for the deviant stimuli were larger than the standard stimuli which showed obvious response inhibition.(3)The P2latency in two choice Oddball task was shorter for trait anxiety participants than for normal participants.(4)Compaired with low arousal negative emotion and non emotion condition, the amplitude of N1-P2and N2were larger but the P3amplitude was smaller, for the normal participants, the N1and P3latency were shorter after high arousal negative emotion than after low arousal negative/non emotion, while the latency of Nl and P3were not different among high/low negative emotion and non emotion condition for trait anxiety participants.The results of study3showed that moderate arousal negative can prove response inhibition for trait anxiety participants, high arousal negative can prove trait anxiety and normal participants’ response inhibition through different mechanism, for normal participants, they put more resource in early stage and inhibition detection stage, and they process the deviant stimuli more quickly, at the same time, they can resolve the response inhibition more quickly using less resources, while for the trait anxiety participants, high arousal negative emotion prove their response inhibition on the early stage and inhibition detecting stage through putting more resources.Integrated the three studies results, we think that valance and arousal can influence cognition/response inhibition through different mechanism. Moderate arousal positive and negative emotion can impair the cognition inhibition. High arousal negative emotion can improve cognition/response inhibition. Trait anxiety participants were more sensitive to negative emotional information, they may experience negative more intensity, so moderate arousal negative emotion could improve trait anxiety participants’ response inhibition too.