Abstract
<p>Whereas the impact of threat anticipation on attentional resources has been documented, its extension to working memory (WM) had yet to be directly examined. A recent study provided first evidence that anticipating threat impairs WM, and that this impairment increased with cognitive anxiety. However, this study used ambient music inductions prior to each trial, leaving open whether observed costs reflect anticipation per se or music induction. The present study replicated this paradigm using a gamified complex-span task in which participants navigated the rooms of a virtual mansion where a neutral host and a threatening host were said to potentially appear at any time. Critically, no host ever appeared during the task. Music inductions were removed to isolate purely anticipatory processes. The aim was to test whether anticipating threat impaired attentional control and WM, and whether these effects increased with cognitive anxiety. Attentional capture and WM were indexed by parity-judgment and recall accuracy, respectively. A significant interaction with cognitive anxiety emerged, so that threat anticipation impaired both attention and WM at high anxiety. These findings replicate and refine the evidence that anticipatory threat impairs attention and WM depends critically on threat intensity and individual differences in anxiety. Moreover, it introduces a new paradigm for isolating the cognitive costs of threat anticipation.</p>