Frontiers in Psychology (Jan 2019)

The Relationship of Anxiety and Stress With Working Memory Performance in a Large Non-depressed Sample

  • Karolina M. Lukasik,
  • Otto Waris,
  • Anna Soveri,
  • Minna Lehtonen,
  • Minna Lehtonen,
  • Minna Lehtonen,
  • Matti Laine,
  • Matti Laine

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00004
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

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Clinical anxiety and acute stress caused by major life events have well-documented detrimental effects on cognitive processes, such as working memory (WM). However, less is known about the relationships of state anxiety or everyday stress with WM performance in non-clinical populations. We investigated the associations between these two factors and three WM composites (verbal WM, visuospatial WM, and n-back updating performance) in a large online sample of non-depressed US American adults. We found a trend for a negative association between WM performance and anxiety, but not with stress. Thus, WM performance appears rather robust against normal variation in anxiety and everyday stress.

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