In this project, we investigate interactions between emotion and attention. Effects of emotion on cognition have long been ignored in the traditional cognitive psychology, because traditional cognitive psychology is based on the information processing paradigm, which is a computer metaphor of the human mind. However, recent years have seen a huge increase in the number of studies investigating relationships between emotion and cognition. At this point, we focus on the effects of anxiety on attention, because the proportion of people suffering some form of anxiety has been increasing in recent years, especially among college students. We all know that anxiety impairs our learning and cognition; however, how anxiety interferes with cognitive functions is not very well understood yet. Therefore, our short term goal is to enhance our understanding of the interactions between anxiety and attention, but our long term goal is to develop some intervention methods to help students who suffer from anxiety, including test anxiety and math anxiety.
Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about this project. If you would like to contribute to this project as a collaborator please email us; if you would like to work on the project as a student research assistant, please fill out our Research Assistant Form.