The impact of anxiety on analogical reasoning

The effect of state anxiety on analogical reasoning was investigated by examining qualitative differences in mapping performance between anxious and non-anxious individuals reasoning about pictorial analogies. The working-memory restriction theory of anxiety, coupled with theories of analogy that link complexity of mapping with working-memory capacity, predicts that high anxiety will impair the ability to find correspondences based on relations between multiple objects relative to correspondences based on overlap of attributes between individual objects. Anxiety was induced in one condition by a stressful speeded subtraction task administered prior to the analogy task. Anxious participants produced fewer relational responses and more attribute responses than did non-anxious participants, both in the absence of explicit instructions to find relational mappings (Experiment 1) and after receiving such instructions (Experiment 2). The findings support the postulated links among anxiety, working memory, and the ability to perform complex analogical mapping.

[1]  John H. Mueller.  Test anxiety, input modality, and levels of organization in free recall , 1977 .

[2]  R. Mayer.  Problem-solving performance with task overload: Effects of self-pacing and trait anxiety , 1977 .

[3]  C. Spielberger,et al.  STAI manual for the State-trait anxiety inventory ("self-evaluation questionnaire") , 1970 .

[4]  Margaret Toms,et al.  Working Memory and Conditional Reasoning , 1993 .

[5]  G. Keinan.  Decision making under stress: scanning of alternatives under controllable and uncontrollable threats. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  K. Klein,et al.  The Relationship of Life Stress to Problem Solving: Task Complexity and Individual Differences , 1994 .

[7]  Dedre Gentner,et al.  Systematicity and Surface Similarity in the Development of Analogy , 1986, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  M. Eysenck.  Anxiety, learning, and memory: A reconceptualization , 1979 .

[9]  M. Eysenck.  Anxiety and cognitive-task performance , 1985 .

[10]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Working Memory: A View from Neuroimaging , 1997, Cognitive Psychology.

[11]  C. MacLeod,et al.  Individual differences in anxiety and the restriction of working memory capacity , 1993 .

[12]  Lee Roy Beach,et al.  The effects of test anxiety and task variables on predecisional information search , 1990 .

[13]  J. Desmond,et al.  Neural Substrates of Fluid Reasoning: An fMRI Study of Neocortical Activation during Performance of the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test , 1997, Cognitive Psychology.

[14]  Z. Kunda,et al.  Superstars and me : Predicting the impact of role models on the self , 1997 .

[15]  S. Phillips,et al.  Processing capacity defined by relational complexity: implications for comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychology. , 1998, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[16]  C. Spielberger,et al.  Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory , 1970 .

[17]  D. Gentner,et al.  Structural Alignment during Similarity Comparisons , 1993, Cognitive Psychology.

[18]  W Revelle,et al.  Effects of anxiety on analogical reasoning: a test of three theoretical models. , 1985, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[19]  H. Ellis,et al.  Irrelevant thoughts, emotional mood states, and cognitive task performance , 1991, Memory & cognition.

[20]  C. M. Yee,et al.  Effects of attentional and stressor manipulations on the P50 gating response. , 1997, Psychophysiology.

[21]  K. Holyoak,et al.  The role of working memory in analogical mapping , 2000, Memory & cognition.

[22]  M. Oaksford,et al.  Mood, reasoning, and central executive processes. , 1996 .

[23]  D. Gentner,et al.  Respects for similarity , 1993 .

[24]  D. Gentner,et al.  Structure mapping in analogy and similarity. , 1997 .

[25]  M. Eysenck,et al.  Anxiety and Performance: The Processing Efficiency Theory , 1992 .

[26]  R. Logie,et al.  Working memory and strategies in syllogistic-reasoning tasks , 1993, Memory & cognition.

[27]  G. Halford.  Children's Understanding: The Development of Mental Models , 1993 .

[28]  K. Holyoak,et al.  A System for Relational Reasoning in Human Prefrontal Cortex , 1999 .

[29]  Dedre Gentner,et al.  Two Forces in the Development of Relational Similarity , 2002 .

[30]  S. Read,et al.  This reminds me of the time when …: Expectation failures in reminding and explanation , 1991 .

[31]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  The effects of an acute psychological stressor on cardiovascular, endocrine, and cellular immune response: a prospective study of individuals high and low in heart rate reactivity. , 1994, Psychophysiology.

[32]  Dedre Gentner,et al.  Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy , 1983, Cogn. Sci..

[33]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Temporal dynamics of brain activation during a working memory task , 1997, Nature.

[34]  K. Holyoak,et al.  The analogical mind. , 1997, The American psychologist.

[35]  K. Holyoak,et al.  Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought , 1994 .

[36]  Barbara A. Spellman,et al.  If Saddam is Hitler then who is George Bush? Analogical mapping between systems of social roles , 1992 .

[37]  John E. Hummel,et al.  Distributed representations of structure: A theory of analogical access and mapping. , 1997 .