Durumluk kaygının dikkat ve yürütücü işlevler üzerindeki etkisi

People complain that their forgetfulness and careless behavior increase in the developing world. Research indicates that anxiety undeniably has an effect on cognitive processes. This study aims to investigate how stress and state anxiety are related with attention and executive functions. Individuals with high state anxiety levels are expected to perform weaker in tests evaluating attention and executive functions than those with low state anxiety levels. An experimental setup was used. First, a pilot study was conducted with a group of 20 people to test whether manipulation to change state anxiety level worked. As manipulation, 2 videos with a length of approximately 5 minutes were used to increase or decrease the state anxiety in the participant. Participants were assigned to the videos by simple random assignment method. After the video was finished, a measure of state anxiety was given. After the observation that the manipulation worked, the main study was started. At this stage, data were collected from 66 participants who are undergraduate and graduate students at Yeditepe University with an average age of 21 years. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two video conditions. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Öner & LeCompte, 1985) and Perceived Stress Scale (Demirkıran, Dereboy, Eskin & Harlak, 2013) were given to the participants to evaluate anxiety and stress levels. Stroop Test (Karakaşve et al., 1999), Forward and Backward Digit Span Tasks (Wechsler, 1987) and Verbal Fluency Test (Tumaç, 1997) were used as the assessment of attention and executive functions. When participants with high and low state anxiety were compared, it was observed that participants with low anxiety level were more successful in executive function tests than participants with high anxiety level. The results were discussed in the light of the relevant literature and the recommendations for future studies and clinical applications were presented. Keywords: state anxiety, stress, attention, cognitive processes, executive functions