The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Dawson Mathis will present Master’s research titled, Anxious Impairment: Exploring Executive Functions and Anxiety in College Students on 03/06/2026 at 1:30pm-2:30pm in Conference Room 394, 540 McCallie Ave. Everyone is invited to attend.
Psychology
Chair: Dr. Amanda Clark
Co-Chair:
Abstract:
College students are tasked with juggling a variety of responsibilities. To manage these responsibilities college students must rely on their executive functioning (EF). Executive function refers to cognitive processes that are used to set goals, make plans to achieve those goals, and shift between tasks when necessary. A large portion of college students report experiencing anxiety and anxiety has been theorized to negatively impact cognitive performance, generally. This study sought to explore the impact of anxiety on inhibition and vigilance performance. Participants’ anxiety scores significantly correlated with the number of omission errors made on the inhibition task. Participants also made significantly different errors of omission on the vigilance task depending on which task was given first. These findings may inform future research investigating the cognitive phenomena that contribute to these differences in anxious and non-anxious people’s performance on these tasks.