Shorter communication
Fractionating the role of executive control in control over worry: A preliminary investigation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2013.12.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We assessed executive control during attempts to control worry and neutral thought.

  • Working memory and inhibition were impaired by attempts to control worry.

  • Effects were not explained by state anxiety.

  • Executive control use was marginally associated with trait worry.

Abstract

Uncontrollable anxious thought characterizes a number of emotional disorders. Little is known, however, about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the ability to control these thoughts. The present study investigated the extent to which two well-characterized executive control processes—working memory and inhibition—are engaged when an individual attempts to control worry. Participants completed a concurrent assessment of these processes while attempting to control personally-relevant worried and neutral thoughts. To examine the specificity of these effects to attempts to control worry, versus a residual “depletion” effect of having previously engaged in worry, a subset of participants completed the assessment without instructions to control their worried or neutral thoughts. Attempts to control worry engaged working memory and inhibition to a greater extent than did attempts to control neutral thought. This increased engagement was not explained solely by anxious affect, nor was it significantly associated with trait worry. Engagement did not differ by group, suggesting that executive control depletion by worry cannot be dismissed as an alternative explanation of these findings. These results highlight working memory and inhibition as potentially valuable constructs for deepening our understanding of the nature and treatment of worry and its control.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 100 undergraduate students (56% female). All were age 18 or older, with no history of traumatic brain injury, no current stimulant medication, and no current or past antipsychotic medication. As undergraduate samples include the full range of trait worry scores (Ruscio, Borkovec, & Ruscio, 2001), no requirements based on trait worry or GAD status were imposed.

Experimental apparatus

The experiment was administered on Dell Pentium IV desktop computers using E-Prime Professional. Stimuli were presented

Results

Participants who did not understand the task or follow directions (accuracy ≤ 3 SD below the mean) were excluded from analyses (n = 6; 3 each from the Control Thoughts and No Instruction groups). Overall accuracy of the remaining participants was high (M = 92%, SD = 7%) and did not differ by group, t(93) = −0.36, p = .722. Error trials, anticipatory responses (RTs less than 150 ms), and outliers (RTs ≥ 3 SD above or below each participant's mean RT) were also excluded from analyses.

For each

Discussion

Which executive control processes are engaged when a person tries to stop worrying? The present study examined two promising candidates: WM and inhibition. These processes were assessed while participants attempted to control their worried and neutral thoughts. Participants performed more poorly on measures of WM (accuracy) and inhibition (RT) when trying to control worry compared to neutral thought, suggesting that these processes were especially engaged by attempts to control worry. The

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