Behavior characteristics of the attention network of military personnel with high and low trait anxiety

The impact of threat of shock-induced anxiety on alerting, orienting, and executive function in women: an ERP study

The present study used a combination of the Threat-of-Shock paradigm and the Attention Network Test (ANT) to investigate how induced anxiety affects alerting, orienting, and executive control and whether individual differences in threat sensitivity moderate these effects. Forty-two female subjects completed the ANT task in alternation under shock-threat and no-shock ("safe") conditions while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The results showed that anxiety induced by the threat of shock had a significant impact on alerting and executive control functions at the neural level. Specifically, alerting-related N1 and stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) differences between double cue and no cue conditions were greater in the threat versus safe state, suggesting that the induced anxiety promoted the early perception of cues and preparation for the target. Moreover, executive control-related P3 and sustained potential (SP) differences between incongruent and congruent trials were greater in the threat versus safe state, indicating that the induced anxiety might improve the attentional allocation efficiency and stimulate subjects to recruit more cognitive resources to resolve conflicts. However, orienting-related ERPs were not affected by the threat of shock, but the threat of shock promoted the processing efficiency of spatial-cue at the behavioral level. Analysis of individual differences revealed that trait anxiety moderated the attentional allocation efficiency when performing executive control related tasks in the threat versus safe state. Our findings demonstrate the adaptive significance of the threat of shock-induced anxiety in that being in an anxious state can enhance individuals' alerting, orienting, and executive functions.

The impact of resilience on the mental health of military personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic: coping styles and regulatory focus

Military personnel encountered multiple stressful events during the COVID-19 lockdown. Reducing non-combat attrition due to mental disorders is crucial for military morale and combat effectiveness. Grounded in stress theory and regulatory focus theory, this study investigates the influence of resilience on military personnel's mental health; coping style and regulatory focus are considered potential mediators and moderators, respectively. We conducted a routine psychological assessment on 1,110 military personnel in China. The results indicate that: (1) resilience has a negative impact on the psychological symptoms of military groups; (2) mature and mixed coping styles in military personnel mediate the association between resilience and psychological symptoms; and (3) regulatory focus predominance has a negative moderating effect on mature coping styles' effects on psychological symptoms. Furthermore, this study supports previous findings that resilience and mental health are interrelated; it demonstrates that military personnel can effectively reduce negative psychological symptoms by improving their resilience level and adopting mature coping styles under stressful situations. The current study presents interventional insights regarding coping styles and mental health from a self-regulatory perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Determinants of anxiety levels among young males in a threat of experiencing military conflict-Applying a machine-learning algorithm in a psychosociological study

Background

Anxiety could be felt even in objectively peaceful situations, but a vision of conflict could result in increased stress levels. In this article, we aimed to identify hidden patterns of mental conditions and create male profiles to illustrate the different subgroups as well as determinants of anxiety levels among them in accordance with proximity to a possibility of direct exposure to military action.

Methods

A sample of Ukrainian males, in duty as conscripts to military service (n = 392, M±SD = 22.1±5.3) participated in a survey. We used the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. In addition to psychological indices, social-demographic data were collected. To discover the number of clusters, the k-means algorithm was used, the optimal number of clusters was found by the elbow algorithm. For validation of the model and its use for further prediction, the random forest machine-learning algorithm, was used.

Results

By performing k-means cluster analyses, 3 subgroups were identified. High values of psychological indices dominated in Subgroup 2, while lowest values dominated in Subgroup 3. Subgroup 1 showed a more even distribution among the indices. The strength of the relevance and main determinants of the prediction of the presented model mostly consisted of mental qualities, while socio-demographic data were slightly significant.

Conclusions

There is no clear relevance between proximity or even the experience of military actions and anxiety levels. Other factors, mostly subjective feelings about mental conditions, are crucial determinants of feeling anxiety.

Interpretation bias of high trait anxiety Chinese military servicemen in ambiguous military scenarios

Converging evidence reveals the negative interpretation bias in anxiety. Given that anxiety is a severe psychological problem among Chinese military personnel, the present study examined whether high trait anxiety military personnel showed negative interpretation bias in real-world situations and whether their interpretations were influenced by self-relevance.The sample included 24 high trait anxiety (H-TA) and 22 low trait anxiety (L-TA) Chinese military servicemen. Participants completed 20 open-ended ambiguous scenarios by deciding how much they believed in the positive and negative ending of each sentence. The 20 scenarios were designed according to real life in military and half of them were self-relevant and the others were non-self-relevant.A 2(group) ×2(self-relevance) ANOVA of positive and negative endings revealed that compared to L-TA, H-TA believed more in negative continuations and less in positive continuations. Moderate correlations were found between samples' believes in positive and negative endings and their trait anxiety scores. Military personnel showed more positive interpretation biases in non-self-relevant scenarios than in self-relevant scenarios.These findings are the first to show interpretation bias in military situations, and interventional strategies to modify servicemen's interpretation bias could be designed according to military situations.

Quality of Life and Anxiety in Military Personnel

The quality of life of military personnel represents their self-evaluation of the quality of their own mental and physical health, social relations, and the environment in which they live and work. The aim of our study was to evaluate the relationship between quality of life and anxiety levels in military personnel of the Serbian Armed Forces.

The cross-sectional study included a total of 311 randomly selected professional military personnel (officers, non-commissioned officers and professional soldiers) between 23 and 53 years of age (mean, 35.3±7 years) without current mental health problems. For the purpose of this study, we used the World Health Organization Abbreviated Instrument for Quality of Life Assessment (WHOQOL-BREF) and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). The statistical analysis included parametric and non-parametric descriptive statistics.

Professional military personnel showed high satisfaction with their quality of life in the categories of social relations (82.52), psychological health (82.10) and physical health (81.68), while the satisfaction scores in the category environment category were the lowest (62.77). The average value for the total BAI score was 4.83±5.66. Quality of life decreased, while anxiety increased, with increasing age of the military personnel. Higher BREF score values were associated with lower scores on the BAI questionnaires in all subscales (p<0.001).

Military personnel of the Serbian Armed Forces showed a high degree of satisfaction with their own quality of life. Learning techniques to easily overcome everyday stress would reducedreduce anxiety and improve the quality of life in military personnel of the Serbian Armed Forces.