Socially anxious individuals with low working memory capacity could not inhibit the goal-irrelevant information

Moriya Jun

Sugiura Yoshinori

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Socially anxious individuals are interfered by distractors. Recent work has suggested that low working memory capacity and inappropriate temporary goal induce attention to distractors. We investigated the effects of working memory capacity and temporary goal on attention to distractors in social anxiety. Participants viewed a rapid serial visual presentation, in which participants reported the identity of a single target letter drawn in red. Distractors appeared before the target was presented. When the color of distractors was red (i.e., goal-relevant stimuli), low-capacity individuals were strongly interfered by the distractors compared to high-capacity individuals regardless of social anxiety. When the color of distractors was goal-irrelevant, low-capacity and high socially anxious individuals were strongly interfered by the distractors. These results suggest that socially anxious individuals with low working memory capacity could not inhibit the goal-irrelevant information and direct attention to distractors.

social anxiety

visual working memory capacity

goal setting

spatial blink

selective attention

eng

Frontiers Media

© 2013 Moriya and Sugiura. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

[ISSN] 1662-5161

[DOI] 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00840

[DOI] https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00840