Michael Eysenck

Attentional control theory (ACT) was proposed to account for trait anxiety’s effects on cognitive performance. According to ACT, impaired processing efficiency in high anxiety is mediated through inefficient executive processes that are needed for effective attentional control. Here we review the central assumptions and predictions of ACT within the context of more recent empirical evidence from neuroimaging studies. We then attempt to provide an account of ACT within a framework of the relevant cognitive processes and their associated neural mechanisms and networks, particularly the fronto-parietal, cingular-opercula, and default mode networks. Future research directions, including whether a neuroscience-informed model of ACT can provide a platform for novel neurocognitive intervention for anxiety, are also discussed.

Personality and Cognitive Performance The two experiments reported here are concerned with the influence of trait anxiety and other individual differences on cognitive performance using the face-in-the-crowd procedure. Participants completed questionnaires (EPQ-R; STAI; Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale) and across two experiments searched for discrepant faces in matrices of otherwise identical faces (in Experiment 1: threatening, happy, neutral targets against emotional or neutral backgrounds, and in Experiment 2: threatening, happy, sad and scheming targets against neutral distractors). The key findings from this study indicated that anxiety enhanced processing efficiency of positive emotional material when interacts with high psychoticism. Additionally, the vigilance for threatening and neutral faces was a characteristic of sanguine individuals with repressive coping while inefficient processing of threatening and neutral stimuli of non-defensive melancholic subjects. These results are discussed with reference to attentional control theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007).