Working memory anxiety and cognitive efficiency under task complexity using eye tracking and physiological arousal

Abstract

Abstract Working memory capacity (WMC) and anxiety are independently implicated in attentional control, but how the two relate to one another in shaping moment-to-moment cognitive and physiological processing under increasing cognitive demand is still poorly understood. To examine this, we classified 96 healthy young adults into four Anxiety–WMC profiles—low-anxiety/high-WMC, low-anxiety/low-WMC, high-anxiety/high-WMC, and high-anxiety/low-WMC—using the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory and an n-back paradigm. Participants completed a progressive battery of visual and executive tasks, including Baseline Visual, Dual n-Back, Arithmetic Visual, and Stroop Visual Search tasks, while eye movements and electrodermal activity (EDA) were recorded continuously. WMC emerged as the primary determinant of task performance, while anxiety was linked to oculomotor and autonomic differences that were most pronounced in the low-WMC groups. High-WMC individuals maintained efficient attentional sampling and comparatively stable physiological arousal as cognitive demands escalated, consistent with effective top-down regulatory control. Low-WMC individuals, particularly those with high anxiety, instead showed prolonged fixation durations, delayed visual orienting, and elevated EDA responses. Given the categorical, four-group comparative design we use throughout, we read this pattern as broadly consistent with an account in which higher WMC is associated with attenuated anxiety-related costs at the level of moment-to-moment attentional deployment, while being explicit about the respects in which the present design can and cannot establish this directly. Multimodal physiological markers are discussed as candidate indicators of individual differences in attentional regulation.