Current predictive processing accounts consider negative affect to result from elevated rates of prediction error, thereby motivating changes in the degree with which prior expectancies and sensory evidence influence our perceptions. Trait anxiety is associated with the amount of negative affect a person is experiencing and has been linked to aberrant strategies in decision making and belief updating. Here, we assessed the degree to which induced prior expectancies influenced motion judgements in a simple perceptual decision making task in 117 healthy participants with varying levels of trait anxiety. High trait anxious individuals showed increased usage of priors, independent from the amount of sensory uncertainty that was perceived. This finding demonstrates aberrant strategies of belief updating in anxiety even in evaluating nonthreatening visual motion stimuli, and thus suggest an influential role of affective traits in processes of perceptual inference.

当前的预测处理说明认为，由于较高的预测错误率导致负面影响，从而促使先前的预期和感官证据影响我们的感知的程度发生变化。特质焦虑与一个人遭受的负面影响的数量有关，并且已与决策和信念更新中的异常策略联系在一起。在这里，我们评估了117名健康人在特质焦虑水平不同的情况下，通过一项简单的感知决策任务，诱发的先期预期对运动判断的影响程度。高特质焦虑的人显示出先验的使用增加，与感知到的感觉不确定性无关。