The Sensitivity To Emotionally Negative Stimuli Of Varying Saliency In Trait Anxiety

Trait anxiety refers to the action of complex emotions. S.Freud who was the founder of psychoanalysis studied anxiety initially. Early studies about anxiety were focused on the impacts to learning. Following more and more researchers were interested the relationship between personality and emotion, the relationship between anxiety and emotion has also been widespread explored and discussed. Most researchers believe that it is main associated with negative emotion. Focusing on the relationship between trait anxiety and negative emotions, integrating all aspects of research results, we summarized the relationships of anxiety and negative correlation, including the following aspects. Firstly, trait anxiety individuals experienced more negative emotions in daily life. That was to say, trait anxiety individuals were more likely to experience negative emotions. Also, the information would be non-negative emotion were more likely to be negatively percepted. Secondly, anxiety individuals have strong and uncomfortable body actions to the negative emotional stimuli. Thirdly, trait anxiety individuals have more negative cognition and evaluation. Fourthly, trait anxiety individuals have attentional bias on negatively threat-related stimuli. Fifthly, anxiety may be related to some cortical and subcortical's activation (more research is needed to support). This study focused on sensitivity of trait anxiety. Three different valence of emotional negative information were assigned in two experiments, exploring an implicit emotional experimental odd-ball paradigm.Experiment one investigated the ERP effects of trait anxiety in different valence of negative emotional pictural stimuli.15 subjects with high trait anxiety and 15 subjects with low trait anxiety finished this experiment. Behavioral data showed that high trait anxiety individuals had shorter reaction time. N1 component of ERPs did not show the expected the interaction between trait anxiety and valence or main effect of different valence. But, in High-trait anxiety group, EN stimuli elicited more negative deflections than MN stimuli in the early P2 component in amplitude. In contrast, there were no differences in amplitude or latency in P2 component during three valence conditions in low trait anxiety group. The latency of N1 and P2 showed main effect of trait anxiety, In high trait anxiety group, the latency of N1 and P2 were significantly lower than that in low trait anxiety group.Experiment two investigated the ERP effects of trait anxiety in different valence of negative emotional adjective stimuli.16 subjects with high trait anxiety and 16 subjects with low trait anxiety participated this experiment. Reaction time in the high trait anxiety group was longer than it in low trait anxiety. N1 amplitude showed no main effect between trait anxiety and valence. But the interaction in latency was significant. The main effect of valence was not significant in N1 latency. P2 amplitude did not show the interaction or main effects between trait anxiety and valence. P2 latency showed the interaction between trait anxiety and valence, but the main effect of valence was not significant. In High-trait anxiety group, EN stimuli elicited more negative deflections than MN stimuli in the early P2 component in amplitude, and there were no differences in MN and neutral. In contrast, there were no differences in amplitude or latency in P2 component deflections during three valence conditions, also no interaction or main effects in low trait anxiety group.This study showed that response in high trait anxiety group was different between negative emotional picture and negative emotional adjectives. Perception of emotional pictural information in high trait anxiety was earlier and quickly, while processing of emotional adjectives was slower than low trait anxiety group. Emotional information in negative picture will speed up the responses in the high trait anxiety. But the emotional information of adjective will slow down the late processing. Further more, the response in high trait anxiety was also different in three valences either of negative emotional picture or of negative emotional adjectives. High trait anxiety is sensitive to different valence of negative emotional pictures, but insensitive to valence of negative emotional words.