Individuals with excessive anxiety and worry often require additional effort to complete tasks, rendering their performance inefficient. Inefficient information processing in anxiety is evident by enlarged amplitude of the error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related brain potential (ERP) elicited after errors during simple reaction time tasks. Although enlarged ERN among worriers is well documented, few studies have examined the effects of interventions aimed at reducing it. Thus, it is unknown whether the ERN could be used to gauge anxiety treatment effects on information processing. The current study aimed to address this gap by recording ERPs among worried undergraduates following an expressive writing exercise (n=18) or a control writing condition (n=16). Expressive writing entails writing about one's deepest thoughts and feelings about a particular event, which can free up cognitive resources and promote more efficient performance among anxious individuals. I predicted that by off-loading worries and freeing up resources, worried individuals in the expressive writing condition would demonstrate reduced ERN and equivalent performance compared to those in the control condition, indicative of more efficient performance. Results supported these predictions. Moreover, a related ERP reflective of conflict-related cognitive control (N2) was also reduced in the expressive writing condition. These results suggest that error- and conflict- related brain activity during simple tasks may be promising markers of treatment response among individuals with clinical anxiety.
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