Anxiety Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anxiety, including details on anxiety disorder, panic attacks, medication, counselling, therapy.

Trait-anxiety dependence of movement time performance in a bimodal choice task in subjects exposed to moderate anxiogenic conditions.

Hainaut JP, Monfort V, Bolmont B

Université de Metz, UFR Sciences Fondamentales Appliquées, Dept STAPS, LIMBP (EA 3940) Emotions-Actions, Campus Bridoux, Avenue Général Delestraint, 57070 Metz-Borny, France.

Recent studies have provided insight into the interdependence between state-anxiety, trait-anxiety and motor performances. In the present study, we investigated in very low trait-anxiety (VLTA) and normal trait-anxiety (NTA) subjects, the effects of moderate state-anxiety induced by the video-recorded Stroop color word interference test, on reaction time and movement time in bimodal choice response time task providing either visual or auditory modality. We found that in anxiogenic condition, movement time performances were improved in visual modality in NTA subjects, and in auditory modality in VLTA subjects. Our results show that depending on their trait-anxiety level, individuals exposed to anxiogenic condition would allocate attentional resources towards a specific relevant modality. Such attentional resources would influence movement time, but not reaction time.

Published 6 November 2006 in Neurosci Lett, 409(3): 196-9.
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