![]() How Does Anxiety Affect Our Attention? Anxiety can cause us to lose some control over how we direct our attention and result in certain hypersensitivities.Īnother function that has been essentially programmed into us as a result of evolution is the response of our visual attention system to threatening stimuli: objects that look like weapons, spiders, fearful facial expressions, or body language. This tends to happen more for individuals who suffer from an anxiety disorder. Because of our past experiences, we overgeneralize in a way that elicits a fearful or anxious response to something that is actually neutral. ![]() When we overgeneralize, we tend to make emotional associations to stimuli that may not even warrant an emotional response. Overall, the research found that although some types of fear and anxiety responses can be beneficial to our survival, others that result from anxiety disorders are possibly due to our tendency to overgeneralize stimuli and misinterpret their threat. The amygdala is a region related to fear and anxiety. The researchers also noted that brain imaging techniques revealed functional differences in the brains of anxious versus non-anxious individuals, and that these differences were seen specifically in the response of the amygdala. More importantly, this is something that they lack control over due to the changes in perception that have already occurred. Therefore, when new stimuli are presented, anxious individuals cannot necessarily discriminate between the new experience and the previous emotional one, leading to an anxious or emotional response in potentially irrelevant situations. In this experiment, the anxious group was more likely to think that one of the new tones was an original tone that they heard, thinking that these new tones were associated with money gain or money loss, when in fact they were not.Įssentially, the researchers determined that for people with anxiety, emotional experiences can actually rewire our brain circuits in a way that the plasticity lasts even after the experience is over. In an experiment like this, the researchers noted that in order to be successful, the participants had to not mistake one of the new tones for the original ones, which in other words is considered to be “overgeneralization.” Over-generalization is a behavioral phenomenon in which we apply one of our experiences, often negative, to all experiences that seem similar in the future, which leads to an inability to discriminate between emotional experiences. If they gave the correct answer, they received a monetary reward. The participants were later exposed to 15 different sounds, and they had to determine whether or not they previously had heard that sound in their training sessions. So, the researchers trained them to associate three distinct tones with one of three different outcomes: losing money, gaining money, or no consequence. Participants in the study were trained to make associations with the tones. In this particular research study, these types of stimuli were defined by auditory sounds, or tones, that were either neutral and not associated with any emotional events or associated with the threat of money loss or money gain. More specifically, anxious individuals have a more difficult time distinguishing between neutral, “safe” stimuli and emotionally-charged or threatening stimuli. How Does Anxiety Affect Our Perception and Discrimination Between Different Stimuli ? There are fundamental differences in how anxious individuals perceive the world compared to non-anxious individuals, and it has to do with overgeneralization.Īccording to a recent study, people with anxiety fundamentally have a different perception of the world. Ultimately, it means that compared to non-anxious individuals, individuals who suffer from anxiety actually experience the environment differently and have altered attention to particular stimuli and events around them. ![]() As it turns out, anxiety can actually cause our brains to undergo certain changes in the neural circuits that respond to fear and stress. However, for people with anxiety, these types of reactions can actually be exaggerated and even occur in response to non-threatening stimuli or events.Īs research continues to be conducted to look deeper into how anxiety affects our perception of the world, scientists have begun to notice differences in how anxious individuals determine whether or not something is threatening or emotionally arousing. Over the course of evolution, humans have retained certain attentional reactions as well as fear responses to potentially threatening stimuli in the surrounding environment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |