Elevated cognitive failures in trait anxiety

Abstract

Previous research indicates that individuals with high levels of trait anxiety have poor attentional control as gauged by the Attentional Control Scale (ACS). However, the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) is a measure of attentional control that has key advantages over the ACS, including predicting important real-world outcomes such as car crash risk. The present study assessed the relationships between trait anxiety, cognitive failures as gauged by the CFQ, and the Focusing and Shifting factors from the ACS in a large sample (N = 532) of adult participants. It was found that higher levels of trait anxiety were associated with increased cognitive failures, and CFQ scores explained unique variance in trait anxiety beyond that explained by either Focusing or Shifting. This means that trait anxious individuals experience problems with attentional control that manifest in important real-world domains such as driving. We discuss reasons why future research should employ the CFQ when investigating experiences of attentional control in relation to trait anxiety. Further, individual differences in the use of reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy did not account for the relationship between attentional control and trait anxiety. This informs theoretical models that seek to explain why these variables are related.