Poster Abstracts

We examined the relationship between anxiety and perceived workload on the Cordoba Naming Test (CNT) performance. The sample consisted of 129 Mexican participants with normal symptoms of anxiety (NSA) and 111 Mexican participants with abnormal symptoms of anxiety (ASA) all residing in Mexico. All the participants were neurologically and psychologically healthy. All the participants completed the CNT and the NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) to measure perceived workload in Spanish. ANCOVAs were used to evaluate CNT performance and perceived workloads between anxiety groups. On the CNT, the NSA outperformed the ASA group, p=.030, ηp²=.02. Meanwhile, on the NASA-TLX, we found the ASA group reported higher levels of perceived workload (i.e., mental demand, effort, temporal demand, frustration) compared to the NSA group, p’s<.05, ηps²=.03-.09. As expected, the NSA outperformed the ASA on the CNT. Furthermore, we found the ASA reported higher levels of perceived workload compared to the NSA group. Our data suggest that ASA impacts performance and perception on the CNT. Future research should investigate how anxiety and perceived workload impact other cognition functions (e.g., memory) in a sample of Mexican participants residing in Mexico.