This hypothesis was tested directly using psychophysiological interaction analysis (PPI) of the time series of Broca’s area and attention-related regions. Activity in Broca’s area was expected to show a greater negative correlation with activity in attention-related regions during the negative condition than during the neutral condition for individuals higher in anxious apprehension. With regard to the relationship between anxious apprehension and overt behavior,

it is possible that both worry and attentional engagement with stimuli will interfere with performance. If so, and Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical if the hypotheses above are supported (i.e., habituation in worry, increase in attention over time), anxious apprehension would not be associated with habituation in behavior, because a behaviorally interfering process is occurring at all Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical times (i.e., worry in the first task half, attentional engagement with stimuli in the second). In order to test whether the effects of worry and attentional engagement on behavior cancel out, mediation analyses were carried out, with habituation Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of behavior as the dependent variables, anxious apprehension as the independent variable, and habituation of activation in Broca’s area and attention-related regions as mediators. In summary, we anticipated that the two anxiety types would be characterized by different patterns

of what has been termed affective chronometry (Davidson 1998). Specifically, we hypothesized that anxious arousal would be characterized by a relatively

quick rise time to peak attentional engagement with negatively valenced words, along with a relatively rapid recovery to baseline. In contrast, we expected that anxious apprehension would be characterized Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical by a relatively slow rise to peak attentional engagement and, potentially, a slower recovery time. Methods Participants and questionnaires Participants were 104 right-handed, native English-speaking Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical undergraduates with normal color GS-1101 vision.1 Participants were recruited from a larger pool of undergraduates (n = 2723) based on three scales: the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ, Meyer et al. 1990), the Anxious Arousal scale of the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ-AA, Watson et al. 1995a), and the Loss of Interest subscale of the Anhedonic Depression scale of the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ-AD-LI). Specifically, participants were contacted if (1) they scored at or above the 80th percentile (PSWQ ≥ 63, MASQ-AA ≥ 33, MASQ-AD-LI ≥ 22) PD184352 (CI-1040) on one of the three psychopathology dimensions and at or below the 50th percentile (PSWQ ≤ 49, MASQ-AA ≤ 25, MASQ-AD-LI ≤ 17) on the other two dimensions, (2) they scored at or above the 80th percentile on all three psychopathology dimensions, or (3) they scored at or below the 50th percentile on all three psychopathology dimensions. The present investigation utilized a dimensional analytic approach because this approach is often associated with greater power (Preacher et al. 2005).