Working memory impairment in relation to the severity of anxiety symptoms

ABSTRACT

A working memory (WM) deficit is a reliable observation in people experiencing anxiety. Whether the level of anxiety is related to the severity of WM difficulties is still an open question. In the present experiment, we investigated this aspect by testing the WM performance of people with different levels of anxiety symptoms. Participants were grouped according to self-report anxiety into a control group with low anxiety scores and an experimental group with clinically relevant anxiety. The experimental group was then divided into a high anxiety group and a severe anxiety group. Participants performed a battery of WM tasks tagging different WM processes. The results showed that, compared to participants with low anxiety, participants with clinically relevant anxiety scores had reduced accuracy in all the WM tasks. Interestingly, participants with high and severe anxiety did not present any significant difference. Anxious participants showed difficulties also in cognitive domains other than WM. Hence, these results supply reliable evidence that people with clinically relevant anxiety scores present WM difficulties, irrespective of symptoms severity. The observation that anxiety compromises performance also in cognitive domains other than WM suggests that the deficit might affect fluid cognition.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• working memory
• symptoms severity
• domain-unspecific deficit

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Dr. Ratko Đokić for helping with the methodology part and for comments that greatly improved the study. We would also thank Medina Muhamedagić for her help with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canton Sarajevo (Ministry for Science, Higher Education and Youth Canton Sarajevo) [grant number 27-02-11-4375-18/21].