The impact of anxiety on prospective memory among children with nonverbal learning disabilities: a multinomial processing tree model

This study investigated differences in prospective memory between children with nonverbal learning disabilities and typically developing children using a color matching task and a multinomial processing tree model. Additionally, it examines how trait anxiety and state anxiety influence the internal components of prospective memory in children with nonverbal learning disabilities. The results of this study were as follows. (1) Compared with typically developing children, children with nonverbal learning disabilities exhibited deficits in prospective memory; specifically, the multinomial processing tree model revealed that children with nonverbal learning disabilities presented significant impairments in the prospective component. (2) Children with nonverbal learning disabilities presented significantly higher levels of trait anxiety than typically developing children did, but there was no significant correlation between trait anxiety and prospective memory performance. (3) Under state anxiety, children with nonverbal learning disabilities performed significantly worse in prospective memory tasks than typically developing children did. (4) Children with nonverbal learning disabilities exhibit significantly worse prospective memory performance under state anxiety than under neutral and positive emotional states. These findings suggest that deficits in prospective memory among children with nonverbal learning disabilities are due to impairments in the prospective component. Coexisting trait anxiety and state anxiety significantly impaired attentional resources (i.e., prospective components), thereby leading to worse prospective memory performance. However, trait anxiety alone did not significantly affect prospective memory performance. This study found that children with nonverbal learning disabilities had significant impairments in prospective memory, especially in the prospective component, compared to typically developing children.