An Experimental Study On The Relations Between Anxiety And Three Subcomponents Of Executive Functions

Executive function (EF for short) is defined as a complex cognitive processing which includes several dynamic, flexible cognitive subcomponents when individuals performance an goal-oriented behavior. EF is a key field of psychology. It is closely related to many psychoneuroses. To explore the relations between anxiety and EF, based on semiological viewpoint of psychoneuroses, the present study discussed the effects of trait anxiety (TA) and state anxiety (SA) on three subcomponents of EF, namely effects on inhibition, shifting and updating. This paper employed the definition of EF proposed by Miyake and his research fellows, and the very definition was confirmed by latent variable analysis. The present research will contribute to better understanding the mechanism of symptoms of psychoneuroses, as well as the cognitive characteristics and rules of psychoneuroses.The present study consists of one plot experiment and three target experiments. All subjects are undergraduates. They were screened by self-reported scale in the plot experiment, grouped under high-TA and low-TA heads. The subjects' subcomponents of EF were measured by three cognitive tasks in three target experiments. The SAs of subjects in three target experiments were immediately obtained by self-reported scale after each experiment. In Experiment 1, inhibition of prepotent responses was measured by the Stroop naming task, which included two conditions, conflict conditions and consistent conditions. Through analyzing the data, the following findings were achieved. In conflict conditions, the response time (RT) of individuals with high-TA was longer than that of low-TA subjects; the rate of response error for individuals with high-SA was higher than that of low-SA subjects; the interactive effect of TAxSAxConditions on the subjects' RT was marginally significant. In Experiment 2, the mental set shifting was tested by the plus-minus task that was performed in two conditions, that is, simple level and difficult level. After analyzing the data, two results were obtained. First, the main effect of the shifting time is significant, that is, for individuals with high-TA, the shifting times were longer than that of their counterparts in both conditions. Second, the interactive effect of TAxSAxConditions was strongly significant. In Experiment 3, the information...