Relationship between worry, anxiety and thought suppression and the components of working memory in a non-clinical sample

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between worry and working memory performance. Sixty-one healthy adults (31 men and 30 women) ranging in age from 18 to 63 years were given three questionnaires (the Worry Domains Questionnaire, the State – Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the White Bear Suppression Inventory) and six working memory tasks (the Digit Span task [forward and reversed], the Spatial Span task [forward and reversed], the Visual Patterns Test, and a dual-performance task. Separate hierarchical regression analyses were performed on each dependent measure to examine the contribution of the independent variables. The results indicated that self-reported worry was a significant contributor to the prediction of working memory performance. However, contrary to the hypothesis, worry did not significantly account for variance on the verbal working memory tasks, but did make a significant and negative contribution to the performance of central executive tasks (i.e., spatial span reversed and the dual task).