The influence of state anxiety on event construction and elaboration during episodic future thinking

Abstract

AbstractEpisodic future thinking (EFT) is a fundamental cognitive capacity that enables individuals to mentally simulate and prepare for possible future events. This capacity involves two distinct phases: construction and elaboration. How state anxiety affects the event construction and elaboration in EFT remains unclear. Therefore, the present study aims to address this issue by adopting a verbal cueing paradigm, taking into account familiarity and emotional valence. To induce state anxiety, our study employed a mental arithmetic task coupled with immediate feedback and the investigator’s supervision. Cue words were associated with either high-familiar or low-familiar future events, as well as different emotional valences (positive, neutral or negative). In the cueing task, each participant was required to construct a specific episodic event and then elaborate on it based on the provided cues. Subsequently, subjective ratings of the imagined event were collected after each imagination. The results revealed that individuals experiencing state anxiety took longer to elaborate events compared to the control group. Notably, there were asymmetric results in high- and low-familiarity conditions when considering cue words with different emotional valence. Overall, this study suggests that the influence of state anxiety on EFT is constrained to the elaboration phase and does not extend to the construction phase.