Effects of Working Memory Training on Anxiety Symptoms and Attention Control in Adolescents with High Levels of Trait Anxiety

Abstract

Trait anxiety is a personality factor of vulnerability to anxiety and depressive disorders. Trait anxiety is associated with impairments in both attention control and processing efficiency. This study investigated the effectiveness of Working Memory Training [WMT] in improving attention control and anxiety syndrome in adolescents with high trait anxiety. The sample consisted of 52 adolescents with high trait anxiety in the age range of 15–17-year-old from Rafsanjan city, Kerman province in the south-east of Iran. Participants were assigned to one of the two groups of training with adaptive dual N-Back and a nonadaptive dual 1-Back active control group. The Age average for the WMT group was 15.83 (SD: 0.7) and 15.77 (SD: 0.75) for the control group. Body temperature was also measured as a physiological indicator of anxiety. They were requested to complete the task for 3-weeks. Findings showed that anxiety, attention control, processing efficiency of attention control, and verbal and spatial-visual Working Memory [WM] capacity were significantly improved in the training group compared to the control group. However, performance effectiveness and temperature were not significantly different between the training and control groups. In addition, in the training group, the temperature was significantly higher among the subgroups with more involvement with the training task than the group with less involvement. WMT can be used as an effective intervention for improving cognitive functions, such as attention control, and in reducing adolescents’ trait anxiety.

Keywords:

• Attention control
• trait anxiety
• working memory capacity
• working memory training

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our thanks to Paul Hoskinson and Phil Nguyen for their help and guidance in programming the Farsi version of the adaptive dual n-back task.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the ethical committee and the constitutional review board of Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran (Ref. IR.KMU.REC.1395.999). Participants were fully informed of the procedure and aims of the study and gave their informed consent.

Author contributions

ZN: Conducted the research and the investigation process, performed the experiment and data collection, performed the formal analysis, and wrote the original draft. MFP: Co-designed the study and contributed to the writing of the article. SMHMN: Was has collaborated on critical review of all drafts. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of financial support for the research partly by the Cognitive Science and Technologies Council [CSTC].