| Description |
Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental disorders and affect 15.7 million Americans each year (Lépine, 2002, p. 4). Anxiety is associated with reduced productivity, physical distress, and other diseases such as depression. Anxiety could also be influential in error response (Compton et al., 2008; Luu et al., 2000; Robinson et al., 2007). Increased response time (RT) to respond to a stimulus following an error is known as post error slowing (PES). PES is widely attributed to increased caution following a mistake or cognitive adaptation to optimize behavior for correct responses in the future (Danielmeier & Ullsperger, 2011). Another theory to explain PES is that unusual responses - whether mistakes or accurate ones depending on which is common - will catch the participant's attention and distract them from their previous strategy leading to slower response times (King et al., 2010; Notebaert et al., 2009). This thesis examines the relationship between anxiety and post error slowing trends in a sample of young adults through linear mixed-effects (lme) modeling. Anxiety and demographic variables were included in a mixed linear model analysis to determine significant predictors of PES. A statistically significant positive association between anxiety and PES in this sample suggests that individuals with reported social anxiety experience an increased reorienting time following an error. |
