Drawn to distraction: Anxiety impairs neural suppression of known distractor featuresin visual search

When searching for a target, it is possible to suppress the features of a known distractor. This suppression may occur early, preventing distractor processing altogether, or only after the distractor initially captures attention. The time course of suppression may also differ as a function of attentional control abilities, such as is seen in individuals with high anxiety. In the present study (N = 48), we used event-related potentials to examine the time course of attentional enhancement and suppression when participants were given pre-trial information about target or distractor features. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that individuals with higher levels of anxiety showed lower neural measures of suppressing the template-matching distractor, with greater evidence of enhancement. Despite this deficit in suppression, later distractor inhibition remained intact. These findings indicate that neural suppression of template-matching distractors is impaired in anxiety – highlighting the role of attentional control abilities in distractor-guided search.