Pupillometric and saccadic measures of affective and executive processing in anxiety

Hepsomali, P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5812-1081, Hadwin, J. A., Liversedge, S. P. and Garner, M. (2017) Pupillometric and saccadic measures of affective and executive processing in anxiety. Biological Psychology, 127. pp. 173-179. ISSN 0301-0511 doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.05.013

Abstract/Summary

Anxious individuals report hyper-arousal and sensitivity to environmental stimuli, difficulties concentrating, performing tasks efficiently and inhibiting unwanted thoughts and distraction. We used pupillometry and eye-movement measures to compare high vs. low anxious individuals hyper-reactivity to emotional stimuli (facial expressions) and subsequent attentional biases in a memory-guided pro- and antisaccade task during conditions of low and high cognitive load (short vs. long delay). High anxious individuals produced larger and slower pupillary responses to face stimuli, and more erroneous eye-movements, particularly following long delay. Low anxious individuals’ pupillary responses were sensitive to task demand (reduced during short delay), whereas high anxious individuals' were not. These findings provide evidence in anxiety of enhanced, sustained and inflexible patterns of pupil responding during affective stimulus processing and cognitive load that precede deficits in task performance.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/113882
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
Publisher	Elsevier BV
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