Clinical anxiety promotes excessive response inhibition. Grillon, C., Robinson, O. J., O'Connell, K., Davis, A., Alvarez, G., Pine, D. S., & Ernst, M. Psychological medicine, 47(3):484–494, February, 2017. Place: England
doi  abstract   bibtex   
BACKGROUND: Laboratory tasks to delineate anxiety disorder features are used to refine classification and inform our understanding of etiological mechanisms. The present study examines laboratory measures of response inhibition, specifically the inhibition of a pre-potent motor response, in clinical anxiety. Data on associations between anxiety and response inhibition remain inconsistent, perhaps because of dissociable effects of clinical anxiety and experimentally manipulated state anxiety. Few studies directly assess the independent and interacting effects of these two anxiety types (state v. disorder) on response inhibition. The current study accomplished this goal, by manipulating state anxiety in healthy and clinically anxious individuals while they complete a response inhibition task. METHOD: The study employs the threat-of-shock paradigm, one of the best-established manipulations for robustly increasing state anxiety. Participants included 82 adults (41 healthy; 41 patients with an anxiety disorder). A go/nogo task with highly frequent go trials was administered during alternating periods of safety and shock threat. Signal detection theory was used to quantify response bias and signal-detection sensitivity. RESULTS: There were independent effects of anxiety and clinical anxiety on response inhibition. In both groups, heightened anxiety facilitated response inhibition, leading to reduced nogo commission errors. Compared with the healthy group, clinical anxiety was associated with excessive response inhibition and increased go omission errors in both the safe and threat conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Response inhibition and its impact on go omission errors appear to be a promising behavioral marker of clinical anxiety. These results have implications for a dimensional view of clinical anxiety.
@article{grillon_clinical_2017,
	title = {Clinical anxiety promotes excessive response inhibition.},
	volume = {47},
	copyright = {All rights reserved},
	issn = {1469-8978 0033-2917},
	doi = {10.1017/S0033291716002555},
	abstract = {BACKGROUND: Laboratory tasks to delineate anxiety disorder features are used to refine classification and inform our understanding of etiological mechanisms. The  present study examines laboratory measures of response inhibition, specifically  the inhibition of a pre-potent motor response, in clinical anxiety. Data on  associations between anxiety and response inhibition remain inconsistent, perhaps  because of dissociable effects of clinical anxiety and experimentally manipulated  state anxiety. Few studies directly assess the independent and interacting  effects of these two anxiety types (state v. disorder) on response inhibition.  The current study accomplished this goal, by manipulating state anxiety in  healthy and clinically anxious individuals while they complete a response  inhibition task. METHOD: The study employs the threat-of-shock paradigm, one of  the best-established manipulations for robustly increasing state anxiety.  Participants included 82 adults (41 healthy; 41 patients with an anxiety  disorder). A go/nogo task with highly frequent go trials was administered during  alternating periods of safety and shock threat. Signal detection theory was used  to quantify response bias and signal-detection sensitivity. RESULTS: There were  independent effects of anxiety and clinical anxiety on response inhibition. In  both groups, heightened anxiety facilitated response inhibition, leading to  reduced nogo commission errors. Compared with the healthy group, clinical anxiety  was associated with excessive response inhibition and increased go omission  errors in both the safe and threat conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Response inhibition  and its impact on go omission errors appear to be a promising behavioral marker  of clinical anxiety. These results have implications for a dimensional view of  clinical anxiety.},
	language = {eng},
	number = {3},
	journal = {Psychological medicine},
	author = {Grillon, C. and Robinson, O. J. and O'Connell, K. and Davis, A. and Alvarez, G. and Pine, D. S. and Ernst, M.},
	month = feb,
	year = {2017},
	pmid = {27776562},
	pmcid = {PMC6100803},
	note = {Place: England},
	keywords = {*Inhibition, *Inhibition, Psychological, Adult, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders/*physiopathology, Biomarkers, Fear/*physiology, Female, Humans, Male, Psychological, Psychological/*physiology, Psychomotor Performance/*physiology, Signal Detection, Signal Detection, Psychological/*physiology, Young Adult, anxiety disorders, behavioral inhibition, go/nogo, threat of shock},
	pages = {484--494},
}

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