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Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: a test of attentional control theory

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posted on 2016-04-12, 12:58 authored by Adam J. Cocks, Robin JacksonRobin Jackson, Daniel T. Bishop, A. Mark Williams
We tested the assumptions of Attentional Control Theory (ACT) by examining the impact of anxiety on anticipation using a dynamic, time-constrained task. Moreover, we examined the involvement of high- and low-level cognitive processes in anticipation and how their importance may interact with anxiety. Skilled and less-skilled tennis players anticipated the shots of opponents under low- and high-anxiety conditions. Participants viewed three types of video stimuli, each depicting different levels of contextual information. Performance effectiveness (response accuracy) and processing efficiency (response accuracy divided by corresponding mental effort) were measured. Skilled players recorded higher levels of response accuracy and processing efficiency compared to less-skilled counterparts. Processing efficiency significantly decreased under high- compared to low-anxiety conditions. No difference in response accuracy was observed. When reviewing directional errors, anxiety was most detrimental to performance in the condition conveying only contextual information, suggesting that anxiety may have a greater impact on high-level (top-down) cognitive processes, potentially due to a shift in attentional control. Our findings provide partial support for ACT; anxiety elicited greater decrements in processing efficiency than performance effectiveness, possibly due to predominance of the stimulus-driven attentional system.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Cognition and Emotion

Volume

30

Issue

6

Pages

1037-1048

Citation

COCKS, A.J. ... et al, 2015. Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: a test of attentional control theory. Cognition and Emotion, 30 (6), pp.1037-1048

Publisher

© Taylor and Francis

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2015-04-17

Publication date

2015-07-25

Copyright date

2016

Notes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Cognition and Emotion on 25th July 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02699931.2015.1044424.

ISSN

0269-9931

eISSN

1464-0600

Language

  • en

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