Joanna Mete (published as Ioanna Mete) · Doctor of Philosophy (Psychology) · Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington · 3 November 2026
Read the thesis and abstract — Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington
Abstract
Some theoretical accounts propose that cognitive control difficulties play a central role in high trait anxiety, particularly in the domain of attentional control, leading to increased distractibility under high demands or stress (e.g., Eysenck et al., 2007, 2023). However, empirical findings are mixed, and the mechanisms underlying altered attentional control in trait anxiety remain unclear. The Dual Mechanisms of Control framework (DMC; Braver, 2012) distinguishes between two temporally distinct control strategies, proactive and reactive control. Proactive control involves anticipatory and/or sustained goal maintenance before interference, while reactive control involves transient goal reactivation after conflict detection. This framework emphasises the role of contextual and motivational factors in shaping control engagement. Within the DMC model, high trait anxiety has been proposed to be associated with a tendency for reduced engagement of proactive control and increased reliance on reactive control. This bias towards reactive control potentially reflects a preference to allocate cognitive resources to monitoring for potential threats, which may come at the expense of proactive goal maintenance. To test this hypothesis, this thesis examined individual differences in proactive and reactive cognitive control as a function of trait anxiety across two well-powered experiments.
Cognitive control was assessed using a letter discrimination task in which participants identified a target letter while ignoring task-irrelevant negative and neutral images under conditions favouring proactive control (frequent distractors) or reactive control (rare distractors). Control efficiency was indexed primarily by response slowing associated with distractor presence under high versus low distractor frequency. Participants were women recruited from an undergraduate psychology cohort who completed the task either in the laboratory (Study 1) or online (Study 2). Trait anxiety was assessed using the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 1983), including its Anxiety and Depression subscales (e.g., Bieling et al., 1998).
As expected, negative images were more distracting than neutral images, particularly under reactive control conditions. Across experiments, no association was observed between STAI total scores and task performance. However, exploratory analyses of the STAI subscales revealed dissociable patterns: the anxiety dimension was associated with faster responses under reactive control conditions in blocks containing negative distractors, regardless of distractor presence, whereas the depression dimension was associated with slower responses under the same conditions. Under proactive control conditions, neither STAI dimension was associated with task performance. Given that the performance facilitation in high STAI-Anxiety under negative low distractor frequency occurred even on distractor-absent trials, it cannot be considered as a specific control (trial-level) effect related to enhanced reactive control. Rather, this pattern is more consistent with a general, contextual (block-wise) effect associated with increased motivational salience due to the presence of unexpected negative distractors. This finding may suggest increased alertness and readiness in individuals with higher trait anxiety, independent of depressive features, when confronted with unpredictable negative events that are controllable (e.g. moderate task demands), which is partly consistent with predictions derived from the DMC framework. In contrast, proactive control appeared unrelated to anxiety or depression under conditions of frequent negative distraction. Although this pattern diverges from prior accounts that emphasise inefficient proactive control in trait anxiety, it may reflect the high-controllability characteristics of the present task. Consistent with recent work, these results further underscore the importance of distinguishing anxiety and depression features in relation to cognitive control. More broadly, by highlighting the context-dependent engagement of proactive and reactive control in trait anxiety, these findings are consistent with a more nuanced account of attentional control that incorporates motivational influences on control strategy selection.