Anxiety and Attentional Processes: The Role of Resting Heart Rate Variability

Individuals with high anxiety preferentially focus attention on emotional information. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays an important role in modulating both and attentional processes. Despite many studies having evaluated bias anxious people, few of them have investigated the change blindness phenomenon associated response toward salient stimuli, considering ANS. This study aimed to examine heart rate variability (HRV) trait top-down bottom-up processes stimuli. Seventy-five healthy university students were divided into (N = 39) low 36) groups completed a detection flicker task neutral, positive, negative results evidenced different pattern between people two valence Specifically, individuals showed elaborating stimuli related their salience (i.e., faster elaborated than neutral positive when mechanisms involved, while slower performances highlighted compared stimuli). Moreover, association HRV, levels, was confirmed. These underline HRV as possible predictor alteration mechanism anxiety.