Date of Submission

2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

Department Chair

Jessica Kendorski, PhD, NCSP, BCBA-D

First Advisor

George McCloskey, PhD

Second Advisor

Sofia Pham, PhD, NCSP

Third Advisor

Katie Fabius, PsyD

Abstract

Anxiety impairs cognition by operating to alter processing efficiency. When anxiety impairs efficiency, the capacity of working memory (WM) is confined especially for individuals who concurrently experience higher levels of anxiety (Yang et al., 2018). The updating function is a crucial process that operates within WM to replace and modify older with novel information to carry out complex cognitive tasks. However, if interference accrues from previously learned information (known as proactive interference, or PI), removing information from WM becomes more difficult. Because the relationship between state anxiety (SA) and WM is less understood compared to trait anxiety (TA), this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between self-reported levels of SA on the updating function of WM. In addition, this study evaluated if SA individuals utilize a semantic organizational clustering strategy rather than recalling a list of words in isolation. Further, because a failure to update WM leads to increased anxiety, this study assessed the order in which information is recalled (the recency effect, or RE). The study results concluded that there was not a significant relationship between SA and PI scores. A significant negative correlation was also concluded between SA and RE scores. There was also a significant negative correlation between semantic clustering scores and PI scores on a verbal list learning task. The study provided support for the established relationships between SA and PI, SA and semantic clustering (SC) scores, and SA and RE scores. A relationship between SA and PI was also found. However, future research is warranted to examine SA levels in a younger student or adolescent population.

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