Attention bias of anxious youth during extended exposure of emotional face pairs: an eye-tracking study

Eye-tracking measurement of attention bias to social threat among youth: A replication and extension study

Attentional bias to social threat cues has been linked to heightened anxiety and irritability in youth. Yet, inconsistent methodology has limited replication and led to mixed findings. The current study aims to 1) replicate and extend two previous pediatric studies demonstrating a relationship between negative affectivity and attentional bias to social threat and 2) examine the test-retest reliability of an eye-tracking paradigm among a subsample of youth. Attention allocation to negative versus non-negative emotional faces was measured using a free-viewing eye-tracking task among youth (N=185 total, 60% female, M age=13.10 years, SD age=2.77) with three face-pair conditions: happy-angry, neutral-disgust, sad-happy. Replicating procedures of two previous studies, linear mixed-effects models compared attention bias between children with anxiety disorders and healthy controls. Bifactor analysis was used to parse shared versus unique facets of general negative affectivity (i.e., anxiety, irritability), which were then examined in relation to attention bias. Test-retest reliability of the bias-index was estimated among a subsample of youth (N=36). No significant differences in attention allocation or bias emerged between anxiety and healthy control groups. While general negative affectivity across the sample was not associated with attention bias, there was a positive relationship for anxiety and irritability on duration of attention allocation toward negative faces. Test-retest reliability for attention bias was moderate (r=0.50, p<.01). While anxiety-related findings from the two previous studies were not replicated, the relationship between attention bias and facets of negative affect suggests a potential target for treatment. Evidence for test-retest reliability encourages future use of the eye-tracking task for researchers.

Social threat processing in adults and children: Faster orienting to, but shorter dwell time on, angry faces during visual search

Attention to emotional signals conveyed by others is critical for gleaning information about potential social partners and the larger social context. Children appear to detect social threats (e.g., angry faces) faster than non-threatening social signals (e.g., neutral faces). However, methods that rely on behavioral responses alone are limited in identifying different attentional processes involved in threat detection or responding. To address this question, we used a visual search paradigm to assess behavioral (i.e., reaction time to select a target image) and attentional (i.e., eye-tracking fixations, saccadic shifts, and dwell time) responses in children (ages 7-10 years old, N = 42) and adults (ages 18-23 years old, N = 46). In doing so, we compared behavioral responding and attentional detection and engagement with threatening (i.e., angry and fearful faces) and non-threatening (i.e., happy faces) social signals. Overall, children and adults were faster to detect social threats (i.e., angry faces), but spent a smaller proportion of time dwelling on them and had slower behavioral responses. Findings underscore the importance of combining different measures to parse differences between processing versus responding to social signals across development. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children and adults are slower to select angry faces when measured by time to mouse-click but faster to detect angry faces when measured by time to first eye fixation. The use of eye-tracking addresses some limitations of prior visual search tasks with children that rely on behavioral responses alone. Results suggest shorter time to first fixation, but subsequently, shorter duration of dwell on social threat in children and adults.

Pre-scan state anxiety is associated with greater right amygdala-hippocampal response to fearful versus happy faces among trait-anxious Latina girls

BACKGROUND

Unfamiliarity with academic research may contribute to higher levels of anticipatory state anxiety about affective neuroimaging tasks. Children with high trait anxiety display differences in brain response to fearful facial affect compared to non-anxious youth, but little is known about the influence of state anxiety on this association. Because reduced engagement in scientific research and greater mistrust among minoritized groups may lead to systematic differences in pre-scan state anxiety, it is crucial to understand the neural correlates of state anxiety during emotion processing so as to disambiguate sources of individual differences.

METHODS

The present study probed the interactive effects of pre-scan state anxiety, trait anxiety, and emotional valence (fearful vs. happy faces) on neural activation during implicit emotion processing in a community sample of 46 preadolescent Latina girls (8-13 years).

RESULTS

Among girls with mean and high levels of trait anxiety, pre-scan state anxiety was associated with greater right amygdala-hippocampal and left inferior parietal lobe response to fearful faces relative to happy faces.

CONCLUSIONS

Anticipatory state anxiety in the scanning context may cause children with moderate and high trait anxiety to be hypervigilant to threats, further compounding the effects of trait anxiety. Neuroimaging researchers should control for state anxiety so that systematic differences in brain activation resulting from MRI apprehension are not misleadingly attributed to demographic or environmental characteristics.

Attention Bias and Anxiety: The Moderating Effect of Sociocultural Variables in Rural Latinx Youth

Attention bias confers risk for anxiety development, however, the influence of sociodemographic variables on the relationship between attention bias and anxiety remains unclear. We examined the association between attention bias and anxiety among rural Latinx youth and investigated potential moderators of this relationship. Clinical symptoms, demographic characteristics, and a performance-based measure of attention bias were collected from 66 rural Latinx youth with clinical levels of anxiety (33.3% female; Mage = 11.74; 92.4% Latinx, 7.6% Mixed Latinx). No moderating effects for age or gender were found. Youth below the poverty line displayed an attention bias away from threat in comparison to youth above the poverty line, who displayed an attention bias towards threat. Among youth below the poverty line, this bias away from threat was associated with increased anxiety. Findings highlight the importance of economic adversity in understanding the relationship between attention bias and anxiety.

Behavioral and neurocognitive factors distinguishing post-traumatic stress comorbidity in substance use disorders

Significant trauma histories and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are common in persons with substance use disorders (SUD) and often associate with increased SUD severity and poorer response to SUD treatment. As such, this sub-population has been associated with unique risk factors and treatment needs. Understanding the distinct etiological profile of persons with co-occurring SUD and PTSD is therefore crucial for advancing our knowledge of underlying mechanisms and the development of precision treatments. To this end, we employed supervised machine learning algorithms to interrogate the responses of 160 participants with SUD on the multidimensional NIDA Phenotyping Assessment Battery. Significant PTSD symptomatology was correctly predicted in 75% of participants (sensitivity: 80%; specificity: 72.22%) using a classification-based model based on anxiety and depressive symptoms, perseverative thinking styles, and interoceptive awareness. A regression-based machine learning model also utilized similar predictors, but failed to accurately predict severity of PTSD symptoms. These data indicate that even in a population already characterized by elevated negative affect (individuals with SUD), especially severe negative affect was predictive of PTSD symptomatology. In a follow-up analysis of a subset of 102 participants who also completed neurocognitive tasks, comorbidity status was correctly predicted in 86.67% of participants (sensitivity: 91.67%; specificity: 66.67%) based on depressive symptoms and fear-related attentional bias. However, a regression-based analysis did not identify fear-related attentional bias as a splitting factor, but instead split and categorized the sample based on indices of aggression, metacognition, distress tolerance, and interoceptive awareness. These data indicate that within a population of individuals with SUD, aberrations in tolerating and regulating aversive internal experiences may also characterize those with significant trauma histories, akin to findings in persons with anxiety without SUD. The results also highlight the need for further research on PTSD-SUD comorbidity that includes additional comparison groups (i.e., persons with only PTSD), captures additional comorbid diagnoses that may influence the PTSD-SUD relationship, examines additional types of SUDs (e.g., alcohol use disorder), and differentiates between subtypes of PTSD.

Higher attention bias for fear at 8 months of age is associated with better socioemotional competencies during toddlerhood

BACKGROUND

In previous studies, an attention bias for signals of fear and threat has been related to socioemotional problems, such as anxiety symptoms, and socioemotional competencies, such as altruistic behaviors in children, adolescents and adults. However, previous studies lack evidence about these relations among infants and toddlers.

AIMS

Our aim was to study the association between the individual variance in attention bias for faces and, specifically, fearful faces during infancy and socioemotional problems and competencies during toddlerhood.

STUDY DESIGN AND SUBJECTS

The study sample was comprised of 245 children (112 girls). We explored attentional face and fear biases at the age of 8 months using eye tracking and the face-distractor paradigm with neutral, happy and fearful faces and a scrambled-face control stimulus. Socioemotional problems and competencies were reported by parents with the Brief Infant and Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) when children were 24 months old.

OUTCOME MEASURES AND RESULTS

A higher attentional fear bias at 8 months of age was related to higher levels of socioemotional competence at 24 months of age (β = .18, p = .008), when infants' sex and temperamental affectivity, maternal age, education and depressive symptoms were controlled. We found no significant association between attentional face or fear bias and socioemotional problems.

CONCLUSIONS

We found that the heightened attention bias for fearful faces was related to positive outcomes in early socioemotional development. Longitudinal study designs are needed to explore the changes in the relation between the attention bias for fear or threat and socioemotional development during early childhood.

Behavioural inhibition and early neural processing of happy and angry faces interact to predict anxiety: a longitudinal ERP study

Limited prospective research has examined whether attention biases to emotion moderate associations between Behavioural Inhibition (BI) and anxiety in preschool-aged children. Furthermore, there has been an over-reliance on behavioral measures in previous studies. Accordingly, we assessed anxiety in a sample of preschool-aged children (3-4 years) at baseline, and again approximately 6 and 11 months later, after they started school. At baseline, children completed an assessment of BI and an EEG task where they were presented with angry, happy, and neutral faces. EEG analyses focused on ERPs (P1, P2, N2) associated with specific stages of attention allocation. Interactions between BI and emotion bias (ERP amplitude for emotional versus neutral faces) were found for N2 and P1. For N2, BI was significantly associated with higher overall anxiety when an angry bias was present. Interestingly for P1, BI was associated with higher overall anxiety when a happy bias was absent. Finally, interactions were found between linear time and happy and angry bias for P1, with a greater linear decrease in anxiety over time when biases were high. These results suggest that attention to emotional stimuli moderates the BI-anxiety relationship across early development.

Trait anxiety affects attentional bias to emotional stimuli across time: A growth curve analysis

Many studies have illustrated the close relationship between anxiety disorders and attentional functioning, but the relationship between trait anxiety and attentional bias remains controversial. This study examines the effect of trait anxiety on the time course of attention to emotional stimuli using materials from the International Affective Picture System. Participants with high vs. low trait anxiety (HTA vs. LTA) viewed four categories of pictures simultaneously: dysphoric, threatening, positive, and neutral. Their eye-movements for each emotional stimulus were recorded for static and dynamic analysis. Data were analyzed using a mixed linear model and growth curve analysis. Specifically, the HTA group showed a greater tendency to avoid threatening stimuli and more pupil diameter variation in the early period of stimulus presentation (0–7.9 s). The HTA group also showed a stronger attentional bias toward positive and dysphoric stimuli in the middle and late period of stimulus presentation (7.9–30 s). These results suggest that trait anxiety has a significant temporal effect on attention to emotional stimuli, and that this effect mainly manifests after 7 s. In finding stronger attentional avoidance of threatening stimuli and more changes in neural activity, as well as a stronger attentional bias toward positive stimuli, this study provides novel insights on the relationship between trait anxiety and selective attention.

Relationships between attention to emotion and anxiety among a community sample of adolescents

BACKGROUND

Attentional bias to threat has been implicated as a cognitive mechanism in anxiety disorders for youth. Yet, prior studies documenting this bias have largely relied on a method with questionable reliability (i.e. dot-probe task) and small samples, few of which included adolescents. The current study sought to address such limitations by examining relations between anxiety - both clinically diagnosed and dimensionally rated - and attentional bias to threat.

METHODS

The study included a community sample of adolescents and employed eye-tracking methodology intended to capture possible biases across the full range of both automatic (i.e. vigilance bias) and controlled attentional processes (i.e. avoidance bias, maintenance bias). We examined both dimensional anxiety (across the full sample; n = 215) and categorical anxiety in a subset case-control analysis (n = 100) as predictors of biases.

RESULTS

Findings indicated that participants with an anxiety disorder oriented more slowly to angry faces than matched controls. Results did not suggest a greater likelihood of initial orienting to angry faces among our participants with anxiety disorders or those with higher dimensional ratings of anxiety. Greater anxiety severity was associated with greater dwell time to neutral faces.

CONCLUSIONS

This is the largest study to date examining eye-tracking metrics of attention to threat among healthy and anxious youth. Findings did not support the notion that anxiety is characterized by heightened vigilance or avoidance/maintenance of attention to threat. All effects detected were extremely small. Links between attention to threat and anxiety among adolescents may be subtle and highly dependent on experimental task dimensions.

The Longitudinal Interplay Between Attention Bias and Interpretation Bias in Social Anxiety in Adolescents

Background

Cognitive biases are found to play a role in the onset and maintenance of social anxiety. However, particularly in adolescence, the link between different biases and their role in predicting social anxiety is far from clear. This study therefore investigated the interplay between attention bias and interpretation bias in relation to social anxiety in adolescence across three years.

Methods

816 adolescents in grade 7 to 9 participated at three yearly waves (52.8% boys, Mage grade7 = 12.60). Social anxiety was measured with a self-report questionnaire. Attention bias was measured with a visual search task with emotional faces. Textual vignettes assessed interpretation bias.

Results

Cross-lagged models showed that negative interpretation bias at grade 7 predicted an increase in social anxiety at grade 8. This effect was not found from grade 8 to 9. Attention bias did not predict social anxiety. Attention bias and interpretation bias were not longitudinally related to each other, nor did they interact with each other in predicting social anxiety.

Conclusions

Thus, no evidence was found for the Combined Cognitive Bias Hypothesis in social anxiety in adolescents. Instead, our results suggest that interpretation bias rather than attention bias contributes to the increase of social anxiety over time.

Eye-tracking to assess anxiety-related attentional biases among a large sample of preadolescent children

A considerable body of research in adults has demonstrated that anxiety disorders are characterised by attentional biases to threat. Findings in children have been inconsistent. The present study examined anxiety-related attention biases using eye tracking methodology in 463 preadolescents between 10 and 12 years of age, of whom 92 met criteria for a DSM-5 anxiety disorder and 371 did not. Preadolescent's gaze was recorded while they viewed adolescent face pairs depicting angry-neutral and happy-neutral expressions with each face pair presented for 5000 ms. No group differences were observed across any eye tracking indices including probability of first fixation direction, latency to first fixation, first fixation duration and dwell time. The sample overall showed faster initial attention towards threat cues, followed by a later broadening of attention away from threat. There is a need to identify the types of threats and the developmental period during which visual attention patterns of anxious and non-anxious youth diverge to inform more developmentally sensitive treatments.

Intergenerational Transmission of Anxious Information Processing Biases: An Updated Conceptual Model

Anxiety disorders are globally one of the most prevalent and disabling forms of psychopathology in adults and children. Having a parent with an anxiety disorder multiplies the risk of anxiety disorders in the offspring, although the specific mechanisms and processes that play a role in this intergenerational transmission remain largely unknown. According to information processing theories, threat-related biases in cognitive processing are a causal mechanism in the development and maintenance of anxiety. These theories propose that individuals with anxiety are more likely to cognitively process novel stimuli in their environment as threatening. Creswell and colleagues proposed a theoretical model that highlighted the role of these cognitive biases as a mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of anxiety (Creswell et al., in Hadwin, Field (eds) Information processing biases and anxiety: a developmental perspective, Wiley, pp 279–295, 2010). This model postulated significant associations between (1) parents’ and children’s threat-related cognitive biases (2) parents’ threat-related cognitive biases in their own and their child’s environment, (3) parents’ threat-related cognitive biases and parenting behaviors that convey anxiety risk to the offspring (e.g., modeling of fear, and verbal threat information transmission), and (4) parenting behaviors and child threat-related biases. This theoretical review collated the recent empirical work testing these four core hypotheses of the model. Building on the reviewed empirical work, an updated conceptual model focusing on threat-related attention and interpretation is proposed. This updated model incorporates the links between cognition and anxiety in parents and children and addresses the potential bidirectional nature of parent–child influences.

The transdiagnostic origins of anxiety and depression during the pediatric period: Linking NIMH research domain criteria (RDoC) constructs to ecological systems

In the last decade, an abundance of research has utilized the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research domain criteria (RDoC) framework to examine mechanisms underlying anxiety and depression in youth. However, relatively little work has examined how these mechanistic intrapersonal processes intersect with context during childhood and adolescence. The current paper covers reviews and meta-analyses that have linked RDoC-relevant constructs to ecological systems in internalizing problems in youth. Specifically, cognitive, biological, and affective factors within the RDoC framework were examined. Based on these reviews and some of the original empirical research they cover, we highlight the integral role of ecological factors to the RDoC framework in predicting onset and maintenance of internalizing problems in youth. Specific recommendations are provided for researchers using the RDoC framework to inform future research integrating ecological systems and development. We advocate for future research and research funding to focus on better integration of the environment and development into the RDoC framework.

Intimate Partner Violence Exposure and Childhood Psychopathology: Associations with Discriminating Fearful and Angry Faces in Young Children

Purpose

Childhood exposure to traumatic violence may shape how children respond to threatening faces and increase risk for psychopathology. Maltreated children may exhibit altered processing of threatening faces; however, the effects of witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) on children's discrimination of facial expressions is under-studied. Emotional face processing differentially relates to psychopathology, with some evidence suggesting improved detection of angry faces in children with fear-related anxiety symptoms, whereas externalizing symptoms are associated with poorer detection of fearful faces and perhaps emotional faces broadly.

Method

In this cross-sectional study, we examined discrimination of threatening emotional faces (angry, fearful) in relation to experiences of probable abuse and witnessing of physical IPV, as well as psychopathology. Children (N = 137, mean age = 5.01 years, SD = 0.81) completed a "face in the crowd task" designed to examine discrimination of angry and fearful faces. Children either searched for an angry face among fearful distractor faces or a fearful face among angry distractors. Probable child abuse, witnessed IPV, and symptoms were assessed in semi-structured maternal interviews.

Results

Children who witnessed violence showed poorer accuracy when fearful faces were the target; however, effects for probable abuse were non-significant. Greater fear-related anxiety symptoms were associated with poorer accuracy for fearful faces. Externalizing symptoms were associated with poorer overall accuracy.

Conclusions

Findings suggest that IPV and fear-related anxiety symptoms were associated with difficulty detecting fearful faces when angry distractors were present, consistent with prior research. Implications of violence- and symptom-associated deficits in emotional face processing are discussed.

Whole-Brain Resting-State Functional Connectivity Patterns Associated With Pediatric Anxiety and Involuntary Attention Capture

BACKGROUND

Pediatric anxiety disorders are linked to dysfunction in multiple functional brain networks, as well as to alterations in the allocation of spatial attention. We used network-level analyses to characterize resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) alterations associated with 1) symptoms of anxiety and 2) alterations in stimulus-driven attention associated with pediatric anxiety disorders. We hypothesized that anxiety was related to altered connectivity of the frontoparietal, default mode, cingulo-opercular, and ventral attention networks and that anxiety-related connectivity alterations that include the ventral attention network would simultaneously be related to deviations in stimulus-driven attention.

METHODS

A sample of children (n = 61; mean = 10.6 years of age), approximately half of whom met criteria for a current anxiety disorder, completed a clinical assay, an attention task, and rs-fc magnetic resonance imaging scans. Network-level analyses examined whole-brain rs-fc patterns associated with clinician-rated anxiety and with involuntary capture of attention. Post hoc analyses controlled for comorbid symptoms.

RESULTS

Elevated clinician-rated anxiety was associated with altered connectivity within the cingulo-opercular network, as well as between the cingulo-opercular network and the ventral attention, default mode, and visual networks. Connectivity between the ventral attention and cingulo-opercular networks was associated with variation in both anxiety and stimulus-driven attention.

CONCLUSIONS

Pediatric anxiety is related to aberrant connectivity patterns among several networks, most of which include the cingulo-opercular network. These results help clarify the within- and between-network interactions associated with pediatric anxiety and its association with altered attention, suggesting that specific network connections could be targeted to improve specific altered processes associated with anxiety.

Longitudinal investigation of shyness and physiological vulnerability: Moderating influences of attention biases to threat and safety

Shyness has long been identified as a vulnerability factor to developing psychosocial problems, but there is heterogeneity in these observed outcomes. One potential factor underlying these relations is individual differences in threat sensitivity. Using a longitudinal design, we examined whether attentional biases toward social threat and safety measured during adulthood moderated the association between shyness measured in emerging adulthood (N = 83, n_female = 48; M_age = 23.56 years, SD_age = 1.09 years) and frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry at rest, a physiological index of vulnerability to psychopathology, measured nearly a decade later in adulthood (M_age = 31.68 years, SD_age = 2.27 years). We found that only biases to threat moderated the association between shyness and resting frontal EEG asymmetry longitudinally. In individuals who displayed relative vigilance to social threat, shyness was associated with greater relative right frontal EEG activity at rest (i.e., increased physiological vulnerability). These findings suggest that attentional biases to threat may play a role in understanding the relation between shyness and some known physiological vulnerabilities to psychopathology in adults.

Initial Maintenance of Attention to Threat in Children with Social Anxiety Disorder? Findings from an Eye-Tracking Experiment

Background

Attentional biases are assumed to be a core feature in the etiology and maintenance of clinical anxiety. The present study focuses on initial maintenance of attention to threat, one of three attentional components investigated the least, particularly in child anxiety.

Methods

Angry and neutral facial expressions were presented in a free-viewing task, while eye-movements were recorded. Participants were N = 96 school-aged children, with n = 50 children with a clinical social anxiety disorder (SAD) and n = 46 healthy control children (HC). Prior to the task, social stress was induced in half of participating children to investigate the impact of increased levels of distress on initial attention allocation.

Results

The length of first fixation to angry faces in children with SAD neither differed from the length of first fixation to neutral faces nor the length of first fixation to angry faces in HC children. Furthermore, this variable was not affected by a stress induction procedure. However, children with SAD initially fixated longer on faces than HC children.

Conclusion

Our findings provide evidence for difficulties disengaging attention from faces. This may indicate that attention allocation is determined by the social nature of the stimuli rather than by the specific emotional valence.

Attention Deployment to the Eye Region of Emotional Faces among Adolescents with and without Social Anxiety Disorder

BACKGROUND

Avoidance of the eye region, especially of faces showing anger, may maintain social anxiety symptoms by negatively reinforcing expectations and fears associated with social situations. Eye-tracking research, however, has yet to explicitly examine differences in attention allocation to the eye region of emotional faces among adolescents with social anxiety disorder (SAD).

METHODS

Gaze patterns were explored in a sample of youth with and without SAD matched on age and sex.

RESULTS

Adolescents with SAD were quicker to fixate, and maintained their initial gaze longer, to the eye region, regardless of emotion, relative to teens without SAD. Group-level differences also emerged for initial fixation duration directed to the eye region of angry faces (when compared with happy faces).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that vigilance to the eye region of faces, especially angry faces, (when compared with happy faces) is characteristic of adolescents with SAD. Adolescents with SAD seem drawn to the eye region, more so than teens without SAD.

Attention Alterations in Pediatric Anxiety: Evidence From Behavior and Neuroimaging

BACKGROUND

Pediatric anxiety disorders involve greater capture of attention by threatening stimuli. However, it is not known if disturbances extend to nonthreatening stimuli, as part of a pervasive disturbance in attention-related brain systems. We hypothesized that pediatric anxiety involves greater capture of attention by salient, nonemotional stimuli, coupled with greater activity in the portion of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) specific to the ventral attention network (VAN).

METHODS

A sample of children (n = 129, 75 girls, mean 10.6 years of age), approximately half of whom met criteria for a current anxiety disorder, completed a task measuring involuntary capture of attention by nonemotional (square boxes) and emotional (angry and neutral faces) stimuli. A subset (n = 61) completed a task variant during functional magnetic resonance imaging. A priori analyses examined activity in functional brain areas within the right IFG, supplemented by a whole-brain, exploratory analysis.

RESULTS

Higher clinician-rated anxiety was associated with greater capture of attention by nonemotional, salient stimuli (F1,125 = 4.94, p = .028) and greater activity in the portion of the IFG specific to the VAN (F1,57 = 10.311, p = .002). Whole-brain analyses confirmed that the effect of anxiety during capture of attention was most pronounced in the VAN portion of the IFG, along with additional areas of the VAN and the default mode network.

CONCLUSIONS

The pathophysiology of pediatric anxiety appears to involve greater capture of attention to salient stimuli, as well as greater activity in attention-related brain networks. These results provide novel behavioral and brain-based targets for treatment of pediatric anxiety disorders.

Brain and Behavior Correlates of Risk Taking in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders

Avoidant behavior is a defining feature of pediatric anxiety disorders. Although prior research has examined it from the perspective of early information processing events, there has been relatively less consideration of the processes by which anxious youth make avoidant decisions and how these choices are reinforced over time. Studies of risk taking are valuable in this regard because they consider how individuals identify the pros and cons of their choices, how they weigh potential gains and losses and estimate their respective probabilities, and how they tolerate the uncertainty intrinsic to any decision. In this review, we place risk taking within existing models of information processing in pediatric anxiety disorders and highlight the particular value of this construct for informing models of developmental psychopathology and individual differences in outcome over time. We review existing behavioral and neurobiological studies of risk taking in anxious youth and conclude by identifying directions for future research.

Psychometric properties of threat-related attentional bias in young children using eye-tracking

Anxiety is one of the most common forms of child psychopathology associated with persistent impairment across the lifespan. Therefore, investigating mechanisms that underlie anxiety in early childhood may improve prevention and intervention efforts. Researchers have linked selective attention toward threat (i.e., attentional bias to threat) with the development of anxiety. However, previous work on attentional bias has used less reliable, reaction time (RT)-based measures of attention. Additionally, few studies have used eye-tracking to measure attentional bias in young children. In the present study, we investigated the psychometric properties of an eye-tracking measure of attentional bias in a sample of young children between 6- and 9-years-old and explored if trait and clinical anxiety were related to attentional biases to threat. Results showed good psychometric properties for threat and neutral attentional biases, comparable to those found in adult eye-tracking studies. Temperamental and clinical anxiety did not significantly relate to threat/neutral dwell time and attentional biases. The significance of these null findings was discussed in relation to existing developmental theories of attentional biases. Future studies should explore if temperamental or clinical anxiety prospectively predict threat attentional bias and the onset of anxiety in older children using a longitudinal design.

Converging Multi-modal Evidence for Implicit Threat-Related Bias in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders

This report examines the relationship between pediatric anxiety disorders and implicit bias evoked by threats. To do so, the report uses two tasks that assess implicit bias to negative-valence faces, the first by eye-gaze and the second by measuring body-movement parameters. The report contrasts task performance in 51 treatment-seeking, medication-free pediatric patients with anxiety disorders and 36 healthy peers. Among these youth, 53 completed an eye-gaze task, 74 completed a body-movement task, and 40 completed both tasks. On the eye-gaze task, patients displayed longer gaze duration on negative relative to non-negative valence faces than healthy peers, F(1, 174) = 8.27, p = .005. In contrast, on the body-movement task, patients displayed a greater tendency to behaviorally avoid negative-valence faces than healthy peers, F(1, 72) = 4.68, p = .033. Finally, implicit bias measures on the two tasks were correlated, r(38) = .31, p = .049. In sum, we found an association between pediatric anxiety disorders and implicit threat bias on two tasks, one measuring eye-gaze and the other measuring whole-body movements. Converging evidence for implicit threat bias encourages future research using multiple tasks in anxiety.

Chinese college students' ability to recognize facial expressions based on their meaning-in-life profiles: An eye-tracking study

OBJECTIVE

People can be categorized into one of four meaning-in-life profiles: High Presence High Search (HPHS), High Presence Low Search (HPLS), Low Presence High Search (LPHS), and Low Presence Low Search (LPLS).The main goal of this study is to provide a theoretical explanation for why Chinese people with different meaning-in-life profiles have different mental health levels than Western people, based on their emotional-cognitive-processing ability.

METHOD

We adopted eye-movement analysis and recognition-judgment experimental paradigm concerning absolute-recognition judgment and relative-recognition judgment in our study. Moreover, we applied a multifactor and multilevel mixed-experimental design. We selected 118 participants for the experiments from the 788 Chinese college students who responded.

RESULTS

Our results showed that HPHS individuals preferred positive-emotion pictures, LPLS individuals preferred negative-emotion pictures, HPLS individuals preferred positive- and neutral-emotion pictures, and LPHS individuals preferred neutral-emotion pictures. Moreover, HPHS individuals were better at accurately processing facial expression from pictures, while LPLS individuals lacked such ability. The fine-processing ability of HPLS and LPHS individuals was lower than that of HPHS yet higher than that of LPLS individuals. Moreover, the features of HPLS individuals were closer to HPHS, while those of LPHS individuals were closer to LPLS.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support the hypothesis that meaning-in-life profiles have different immediate processing abilities and preferences regarding facial expression recognition and different emotional-cognitive-processing ability.

Attentional Bias to Facial Expressions of Different Emotions - A Cross-Cultural Comparison of ≠Akhoe Hai||om and German Children and Adolescents

The attentional bias to negative information enables humans to quickly identify and to respond appropriately to potentially threatening situations. Because of its adaptive function, the enhanced sensitivity to negative information is expected to represent a universal trait, shared by all humans regardless of their cultural background. However, existing research focuses almost exclusively on humans from Western industrialized societies, who are not representative for the human species. Therefore, we compare humans from two distinct cultural contexts: adolescents and children from Germany, a Western industrialized society, and from the ≠Akhoe Hai||om, semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers in Namibia. We predicted that both groups show an attentional bias toward negative facial expressions as compared to neutral or positive faces. We used eye-tracking to measure their fixation duration on facial expressions depicting different emotions, including negative (fear, anger), positive (happy), and neutral faces. Both Germans and the ≠Akhoe Hai||om gazed longer at fearful faces, but shorter on angry faces, challenging the notion of a general bias toward negative emotions. For happy faces, fixation durations varied between the two groups, suggesting more flexibility in the response to positive emotions. Our findings emphasize the need for placing research on emotion perception into an evolutionary, cross-cultural comparative framework that considers the adaptive significance of specific emotions, rather than differentiating between positive and negative information, and enables systematic comparisons across participants from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Attention bias towards threat in African American children exposed to early life trauma

BACKGROUND

Attentional bias is linked to a range of mood disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study examined attention bias patterns in African American children exposed to trauma, in order to better understand potential risk factors for PTSD.

METHODS

31 children (ages 8-14) completed an eye-tracking task to assess gaze bias patterns while viewing pairs of emotional and neutral faces. Trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms were assessed in a subsample of children (n = 24).

RESULTS

Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) results examining attention bias indices and gender showed greater attention bias toward angry faces than happy faces (p < 0.01) and toward emotional faces in males than females (p < 0.05). Correlational analyses showed attention bias toward angry faces was associated with greater levels of child trauma exposure (p < 0.05). Based on linear regression analysis, child trauma exposure accounted for 17 % of variance in attention bias toward angry versus neutral faces independent of gender or posttraumatic stress symptoms (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Trauma exposure in children is related to altered attention bias, via enhanced attention towards threatening cues. Results contribute to evidence that males and females may exhibit different attentional patterns. This study highlights the importance of additional research on attention bias patterns and prospective mental health outcomes across gender and through development.

Temperament moderates developmental changes in vigilance to emotional faces in infants: Evidence from an eye-tracking study

Affect-biased attention reflects the prioritization of attention to stimuli that individuals deem to be motivationally and/or affectively salient. Normative affect-biased attention is early-emerging, providing an experience-expectant function for socioemotional development. Evidence is limited regarding how reactive and regulatory aspects of temperament may shape maturational changes in affect-biased attention that operate at the earliest stages of information processing. This study implemented a novel eye-tracking paradigm designed to capture attention vigilance in infants. We assessed temperamental negative affect (NA) and attention control (AC) using laboratory observations and parent-reports, respectively. Among infants (N = 161 in the final analysis) aged 4 to 24 months (Mean = 12.05, SD = 5.46; 86 males), there was a significant age effect on fixation latency to emotional versus neutral faces only in infants characterized with high NA and high AC. Specifically, in infants with these temperament traits, older infants showed shorter latency (i.e., greater vigilance) toward neutral faces, which are potentially novel and unfamiliar to infants. The age effect on vigilance toward emotional faces was not significant. The findings support the argument that the development of affect-biased attention is associated with multiple temperament processes that potentially interact over time.

Hybrid Eye-Tracking on a Smartphone with CNN Feature Extraction and an Infrared 3D Model

This paper describes a low-cost, robust, and accurate remote eye-tracking system that uses an industrial prototype smartphone with integrated infrared illumination and camera. Numerous studies have demonstrated the beneficial use of eye-tracking in domains such as neurological and neuropsychiatric testing, advertising evaluation, pilot training, and automotive safety. Remote eye-tracking on a smartphone could enable the significant growth in the deployment of applications in these domains. Our system uses a 3D gaze-estimation model that enables accurate point-of-gaze (PoG) estimation with free head and device motion. To accurately determine the input eye features (pupil center and corneal reflections), the system uses Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) together with a novel center-of-mass output layer. The use of CNNs improves the system’s robustness to the significant variability in the appearance of eye-images found in handheld eye trackers. The system was tested with 8 subjects with the device free to move in their hands and produced a gaze bias of 0.72°. Our hybrid approach that uses artificial illumination, a 3D gaze-estimation model, and a CNN feature extractor achieved an accuracy that is significantly (400%) better than current eye-tracking systems on smartphones that use natural illumination and machine-learning techniques to estimate the PoG.

Free-viewing multi-stimulus eye tracking task to index attention bias for alcohol versus soda cues: Satisfactory reliability and criterion validity

Cognitive -motivational models point to attention bias (AB) as an important factor in the persistence of problematic drinking behavior. Unfortunately, the measures that have been used to examine AB in addiction typically showed poor psychometric properties. To bring research on AB a critical step further it would be crucial to develop tasks with acceptable reliability and construct validity. Recently, Lazarov and colleagues (2016) developed a multi-stimulus free-viewing task (participants were free to look at any part of the screen and there was no secondary task involved) that showed excellent psychometric properties in the context of social anxiety as well as depression. We, therefore, adapted this task and examined its psychometric quality within the context of alcohol use. Participants with varying levels of alcohol use (N = 100) were presented with 54 matrices each containing 8 alcoholic and 8 non-alcoholic drinks. Each matrix was presented for 6 s. First fixation (100 ms) location and latency and total dwell time were assessed for alcohol and soda pictures. Assessment of AB, craving, and alcohol use (problems) was repeated after 3-8 days. Specifically, the dwell-time based AB-measure showed excellent internal reliability and considerable stability. Supporting the validity of the current AB-measures, it was found that participants with higher scores on craving and alcohol problems (i) dwelt longer on alcohol stimuli, and (ii) more often showed a first fixation on alcohol, whereas (iii) stronger craving was associated with shorter latency of first alcohol fixations. The AB-measure showed promising psychometric properties. Thus, this free-viewing eye-tracking task seems a welcome new tool for being used in future research on AB in addiction.

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Eye-Tracking of Attention to Threat in Child and Adolescent Anxiety

OBJECTIVE

Attention biases for threat may reflect an early risk marker for anxiety disorders. Yet questions remain regarding the direction and time-course of anxiety-linked biased attention patterns in youth. A meta-analysis of eye-tracking studies of biased attention for threat was used to compare the presence of an initial vigilance toward threat and a subsequent avoidance in anxious and nonanxious youths.

METHOD

PubMed, PsycARTICLES, Medline, PsychINFO, and Embase were searched using anxiety, children and adolescent, and eye-tracking-related key terms. Study inclusion criteria were as follows: studies including participants ≤18 years of age; reported anxiety using standardized measures; measured attention bias using eye tracking with a free-viewing task; comparison of attention toward threatening and neutral stimuli; and available data to allow effect size computation for at least one relevant measure. A random effects model estimated between- and within-group effects of first fixations toward threat and overall dwell time on threat.

RESULTS

Thirteen eligible studies involving 798 participants showed that neither youths with or without anxiety showed significant bias in first fixation to threat versus neutral stimuli. However anxious youths showed significantly less overall dwell time on threat versus neutral stimuli than nonanxious controls (g = -0.26).

CONCLUSION

Contrasting with adult eye-tracking data and child and adolescent data from reaction time indices of attention biases to threat, there was no vigilance bias toward threat in anxious youths. Instead, anxious youths were more avoidant of threat across the time course of stimulus viewing. Developmental differences in brain circuits contributing to attention deployment to emotional stimuli and their relationship with anxiety are discussed.

Attention to Peer Feedback Through the Eyes of Adolescents with a History of Anxiety and Healthy Adolescents

During adolescence, youth may experience heightened attention bias to socially relevant stimuli; however, it is unclear if attention bias toward social threat may be exacerbated for adolescents with a history of anxiety. This study evaluated attentional bias during the Chatroom-Interact task with 25 adolescents with a history of anxiety (18F, Mage = 13.6) and 22 healthy adolescents (13F, Mage = 13.8). In this task, participants received feedback from fictional, virtual peers who either chose them (acceptance) or rejected them (rejection). Overall, participants were faster to orient toward and spent longer time dwelling on their own picture after both rejection and acceptance compared to non-feedback cues. Social feedback was associated with greater pupillary reactivity, an index of cognitive and emotional neural processing, compared to non-feedback cues. During acceptance feedback (but not during rejection feedback), anxious youth displayed greater pupil response compared to healthy youth, suggesting that positive feedback from peers may differentially influence youth with a history of an anxiety disorder.

Change in gaze-based attention bias in adolescents with Social Anxiety Disorder

Although attention bias (AB) toward threat has been associated with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), concerns regarding the ability of current measures to detect change in AB following treatment exist. We sought to examine change in bias, as measured via eye-tracking, in adolescents with SAD receiving either attention-bias modification training (ABMT) or attention-control training (ACT). Gaze-based AB was associated (r = -0.361) with symptoms of social anxiety prior to treatment, whereas there was no association between bias as measured via dot probe and social anxiety. Moreover, gaze-based bias to same-age face stimuli showed change following treatment. Large effects are seen for condition (ABMT or ACT) and for time, independent of treatment condition, in gaze-based AB to same-age stimuli. Findings suggest that further research on gaze-based bias, to assess stability over time outside of treatment and sensitivity to change following intervention, is warranted.

Facial emotion perception and social competence in children (8 to 16 years old) with genetic generalized epilepsy and temporal lobe epilepsy

Facial emotion perception (FEP) impairments are common in adults with epilepsy and associated with impaired psychosocial functioning. Research into the presence of FEP deficits in children with epilepsy and the functional implications of these deficits is limited. The primary aims of this study were to assess FEP abilities in children (8 to 16 years old) with genetic generalized epilepsy (GGE) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and examine whether FEP is related to everyday social functioning. Forty-four children (8 to 16 years) with epilepsy (22 GGE, 22 TLE) and 22 typically developing controls completed the Pictures of Facial Affect (POFA) battery to assess FEP and a brief test of intellectual functioning (intelligence quotient [IQ]). Parents completed questionnaires assessing social competence of their child. Neurologists completed the Global Assessment of Severity of Epilepsy (GASE) scale as a measure of overall epilepsy severity. Demographic and clinical information was obtained from medical records and clinical interviews with parents. Findings revealed significant, overall FEP impairments and reduced social competence in children with GGE and TLE compared to controls. The magnitude of FEP impairment (i.e., across all emotions) was comparable in the two epilepsy groups, yet different emotions were impaired in each group: children with GGE were impaired in recognizing anger and disgust, whereas children with TLE were impaired in sadness and disgust, compared to controls. Contrary to expectations, total FEP accuracy was not significantly correlated with social competence in either epilepsy group. In conclusion, children with GGE and TLE have significant impairments recognizing emotional expressions on faces. Further research is needed to examine whether underlying FEP impairments relate to social and emotional functioning in children with epilepsy.

Stationary and ambulatory attention patterns are differentially associated with early temperamental risk for socioemotional problems: Preliminary evidence from a multimodal eye-tracking investigation

Behavioral Inhibition (BI) is a temperament type that predicts social withdrawal in childhood and anxiety disorders later in life. However, not all BI children develop anxiety. Attention bias (AB) may enhance the vulnerability for anxiety in BI children, and interfere with their development of effective emotion regulation. In order to fully probe attention patterns, we used traditional measures of reaction time (RT), stationary eye-tracking, and recently emerging mobile eye-tracking measures of attention in a sample of 5- to 7-year-olds characterized as BI (N = 23) or non-BI (N = 58) using parent reports. There were no BI-related differences in RT or stationary eye-tracking indices of AB in a dot-probe task. However, findings in a subsample from whom eye-tracking data were collected during a live social interaction indicated that BI children (N = 12) directed fewer gaze shifts to the stranger than non-BI children (N = 25). Moreover, the frequency of gazes toward the stranger was positively associated with stationary AB only in BI, but not in non-BI, children. Hence, BI was characterized by a consistent pattern of attention across stationary and ambulatory measures. We demonstrate the utility of mobile eye-tracking as an effective tool to extend the assessment of attention and regulation to social interactive contexts.

Anxiety-Linked Attentional Bias: Is It Reliable?

There is substantial evidence that heightened anxiety vulnerability is characterized by increased selective attention to threatening information. The reliability of this anxiety-linked attentional bias has become the focus of considerable recent interest. We distinguish between the potential inconsistency of anxiety-linked attentional bias and inconsistency potentially reflecting the psychometric properties of the assessment approaches used to measure it. Though groups with heightened anxiety vulnerability often exhibit, on average, elevated attention to threat, the evidence suggests that individuals are unlikely to each display a stable, invariant attentional bias to threat. Moreover, although existing assessment approaches can differentiate between groups, they do not exhibit the internal consistency or test-retest reliability necessary to classify individuals in terms of their characteristic pattern of attentional responding to threat. We discuss the appropriate uses of existing attentional bias assessment tasks and propose strategies for enhancing classification of individuals in terms of their tendency to display an attentional bias to threat.

An integrative review of the vigilance-avoidance model in pediatric anxiety disorders: Are we looking in the wrong place?

Enduring cognitive models of anxiety posit that negative biases in information processing are implicated in the etiology, maintenance, and recurrence of anxiety disorders in youth and adults. Specifically, the vigilance-avoidance model of attention is an influential hypothesis proposed to explain anxious individuals' attentional patterns. The vigilance-avoidance model posits that anxious individuals, relative to nonanxious individuals, initially orient more quickly to threatening stimuli and then later avoid threatening stimuli. However, a large body of empirical research examining attentional mechanisms in anxious individuals uses paradigms that do not allow the measurement of the time course of attention. Furthermore, existing reviews that examine the time course of attention only include studies with adults. We systematically review in depth the literature that compares anxious and non-anxious children that takes advantage of research designs that allow the examination of the time course of attention. Across studies, there is not robust support for the vigilance-avoidance model in samples of anxious youth. Future research examining attention biases across time should employ tasks that more directly measure multiple stages of attention, in order to assess if vigilance-avoidance patterns emerge based on sample characteristics or task variables, and to inform intervention efforts.

Examining differential relationships among self-reported attentional control, depression, and anxiety in a transdiagnostic clinical sample

BACKGROUND

Poor attentional control, defined as difficulty focusing attention on a task or shifting attention flexibly between tasks, is a transdiagnostic construct theorized to confer risk for, and maintain, depression and anxiety. Research to date in non-clinical samples has suggested a dissociable relationship between the two factors of self-reported attentional control and psychopathology, with depression being associated with difficulties shifting and anxiety being associated with focusing. However, to our knowledge no study has tested this differential set of relationships in a clinical sample.

METHODS

Adults (N = 493) presenting for psychiatric treatment completed measures of depressive and anxiety symptom severity and self-reported attentional control. Hierarchical linear regression and Zou's (2007) confidence interval method were used to examine the relationship between clinical symptoms and attentional control.

RESULTS

Both shifting and focusing were significantly correlated with anxiety and depressive symptoms in this sample. However, focusing was more strongly associated with clinical symptomatology than shifting, which showed a weak correlation.

LIMITATIONS

All constructs were measured cross-sectionally by self-report questionnaires.

CONCLUSIONS

In contrast to studies conducted in non-clinical samples, attentional focusing appears to be more relevant than attentional shifting in a clinical sample for both depression and anxiety symptoms. These findings lend support to efforts to develop neurocognitive interventions that improve focusing. Replication of these findings, particularly in longitudinal studies, is warranted.

Attention to threat in posttraumatic stress disorder as indexed by eye-tracking indices: a systematic review

BACKGROUND

Cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) implicate threat-related attentional biases in the etiology and phenomenology of the disorder. However, extant attentional research using reaction time (RT)-based paradigms and measures has yielded mixed results. Eye-tracking methodology has emerged in recent years to overcome several inherent drawbacks of RT-based tasks, striving to better delineate attentional processes.

METHODS

A systematic review of experimental studies examining threat-related attention biases in PTSD, using eye-tracking methodology and group-comparison designs, was conducted conforming to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Studies were selected following a systematic search for publications between 1980 and December 2017 in PsycINFO, MEDLINE and the National Center for PTSD Research's Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress (PILOTS) database. Additional records were identified by employing the Similar Articles feature in PubMed, and the Cited Reference Search in ISI Web of Science. Reference sections of review articles, book chapters and studies selected for inclusion were searched for further studies. Ongoing studies were also sought through Clinicaltrials.gov.

RESULTS

A total of 11 studies (n = 456 participants in total) were included in the final review. Results indicated little support for enhanced threat detection, hypervigilance and attentional avoidance. However, consistent evidence emerged for sustained attention on threat (i.e. attention maintenance) in PTSD.

CONCLUSIONS

This review is the first to systematically evaluate extant findings in PTSD emanating from eye-tracking studies employing group-comparison designs. Results suggest that sustained attention on threat might serve as a potential target for therapeutic intervention.

Threat-related Attention Bias in Socioemotional Development: A Critical Review and Methodological Considerations

Cross-sectional evidence suggests that attention bias to threat is linked to anxiety disorders and anxiety vulnerability in both children and adults. However, there is a lack of developmental evidence regarding the causal mechanisms through which attention bias to threat might convey risks for socioemotional problems, such as anxiety. Gaining insights into this question demands longitudinal research to track the complex interplay between threat-related attention and socioemotional functioning. Developing and implementing reliable and valid assessments tools is essential to this line of work. This review presents theoretical accounts and empirical evidence from behavioral, eye-tracking, and neural assessments of attention to discuss our current understanding of the development of normative threat-related attention in infancy, as well as maladaptive threat-related attention patterns that may be associated with the development of anxiety. This review highlights the importance of measuring threat-related attention using multiple attention paradigms at multiple levels of analysis. In order to understand if and how threat-related attention bias in real-life, social interactive contexts can predict socioemotional development outcomes, this review proposes that future research cannot solely rely on screen-based paradigms but needs to extend the assessment of threat-related attention to naturalistic settings. Mobile eye-tracking technology provides an effective tool for capturing threat-related attention processes in vivo as children navigate fear-eliciting environments and may help us uncover more proximal bio-psycho-behavioral markers of anxiety.

Psychopathic traits are associated with reduced fixations to the eye region of fearful faces

Impairments in processing fearful faces have been documented in both children and adults with psychopathic traits, suggesting a potential mechanism by which psychopathic individuals develop callous and manipulative interpersonal and affective traits. Recently, research has demonstrated that psychopathic traits are associated with reduced fixations to the eye regions of faces in samples of children and community-dwelling adults, however this relationship has not yet been established in an offender sample with high levels of psychopathy. In the current study, we employed eye-tracking with paradigms involving the identification and passive viewing of facial expressions of emotion, respectively, in a sample of adult male criminal offenders (n = 108) to elucidate the relationship between visual processing of fearful facial expressions and interpersonal and affective psychopathic traits. We found that the interpersonal-affective traits of psychopathy were significantly related to fewer fixations to the eyes of fear faces during the emotion recognition task. This association was driven particularly by the interpersonal psychopathic traits (e.g., egocentricity, deceitfulness), whereas fear recognition accuracy was inversely related to the affective psychopathic traits (e.g., callousness, lack of empathy). These findings highlight potential mechanisms for the subset of the interpersonal-affective traits exhibited by psychopathic individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record

A Reformulated Architecture of Cognitive Risks for Psychopathology: Common and Specific Dimensions and Links to Internalizing Outcomes in Adolescence

Multiple cognitive risk products (dysfunctional attitudes [DA], negative inferential style [NIS], self-criticism, dependency, rumination) predict internalizing disorders; however, an optimal structure to assess these risks is unknown. We evaluated the fit, construct validity, and utility of a bifactor, single, and correlated factor model in a community sample of 382 adolescents (age 11-15 years; 59% female). The bifactor, hierarchical single, and correlated factor models all fit well. The bifactor model included a common factor (c), capturing covariance across all cognitive risk measures, and specific latent factors for DA, NIS, dependency and rumination. Construct validity of these factor structures was evaluated with external validators, including depression and anxious arousal (AA) symptoms, positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), and onset of depression diagnostic onset over 2 years. C was associated with higher depression, NA, and AA; lower PA; and predicted depressive episodes. Hierarchical single and correlated factor models also related to external validators.

Subclinically Anxious Adolescents Do Not Display Attention Biases When Processing Emotional Faces - An Eye-Tracking Study

Recent research suggests that early difficulties with emotion regulation go along with an increased risk for developing psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety disorders for example. Adolescent anxiety is often referred to as a gateway disorder, due to its high predictability for lifelong persistent mental health problems. It has been shown that clinically anxious adolescents exhibit attention biases toward negative stimuli, yet whether these biases can also be found in the subclinical range of subclinically anxious adolescents is currently unclear. In this study, we set out to investigate this question by combining an emotional Go-Nogo task with eye-tracking techniques to assess attention biases for emotional faces in a subclinical sample of 23 subclinically anxious adolescent girls. This combined approach allowed us to look at both, behavioral and covert attention biases. Using both traditional and Bayesian hypothesis testing, we found no evidence for a bias toward negative, threat-relevant stimuli in the behavioral level or eye-tracking data. We believe that the results can help close a gap in the current literature by showing that like low-anxious adolescents, subclinically anxious adolescents do not exhibit attention biases when viewing de-contextualized emotional stimuli in the Overlap task. Together with previous research findings in clinically anxious participants which have reported high levels of attention biases, our results seem to suggest that attention biases do no increase linearly as a function of individual anxiety level. Future research is now needed to explore the contribution of additional factors, such as depression for example.

Mitigating Risk? Set-Shifting Ability in High Threat Sensitive Individuals Predicts Approach Behavior During Simulated Peer-Rejection

In this investigation we explored how two dimensions underlying current models of psychopathology, threat sensitivity and executive cognitive processing, may come together to influence downstream responses to social threat. Specifically, we investigated how set-shifting ability influences responses to simulated peer-rejection in high threat sensitive individuals (n = 66) selected from a larger sample. Our findings suggest the possibility of risk-reducing benefits imparted from higher set-shifting and executive resources. In particular, we saw evidence of greater approach-related behavior, including higher intensity positive emotional expressions and a relative increase in the proportion of parasympathetic activity, with higher set-shifting. Our findings join a small but growing body of research examining how risks elevated by threat sensitivity may be mitigated by executive cognitive processing.

The Influence of Social Communication Impairments on Gaze in Adolescents with Social Anxiety Disorder

Adolescents with social anxiety disorder (SAD) often present distorted beliefs related to expected social rejection, coupled with avoidance of social stimuli including interpersonal interactions and others' gaze. Social communication (SC) deficits, often seen in SAD, may play a role in avoidance of social stimuli. The present study evaluated whether SC impairment uniquely contributes to diminished or heightened attention to social stimuli. Gaze patterns to social stimuli were examined in a sample of 41 adolescents with SAD (12-16 years of age; 68% female). Unexpectedly, no significant relationship was observed between SC impairment and fixation duration to angry or neutral faces. However, SC impairment did predict greater fixation duration to happy faces, after controlling for social anxiety severity [adjusted R ²  = 0.201, F(2, 38) = 4.536, p = 0.018]. Clinical implications are discussed, focusing on the potential utility of targeting SC impairments directly in light of the role of SC difficulties in youth with SAD.

Children with social anxiety disorder show blunted pupillary reactivity and altered eye contact processing in response to emotional faces: Insights from pupillometry and eye movements

Cognitive models and adult research associate social anxiety disorder (SAD) with hypervigilant-avoidant processing of social information, such as eye contact. However, processing biases in childhood SAD remain mostly unexplored. We examined 10- to 13-year-old children's eye contact processing and pupil dilation in response to happy, neutral, and angry faces in three groups: SAD (n = 31), mixed anxiety disorders (MAD; n = 30), and healthy controls (HC; n = 32). Compared to HC, SAD children showed faster first fixations on the eye region of neutral faces and shorter first fixation durations on the eye region of all faces. No differences between the two clinical groups emerged in eye movement results. SAD girls showed reduced pupil dilation in response to happy and angry faces compared to MAD and to happy faces compared to HC. SAD boys showed reduced pupil dilation in response to neutral faces compared to HC. Dimensionally, reduced pupil dilation was linked to social anxiety severity while eye movements were correlated with mixed anxiety and depressive severity. Results suggest that hypervigilant-avoidant eye contact processing and a blunted pupillary reactivity characterize children with SAD. Both transdiagnostic and disorder-specific processing biases are relevant for the understanding of childhood SAD.

I Thought I Saw "Zorro": An Inattentional Blindness Study

Objective

Inattentional blindness (IB) refers to an observer's failure to notice unexpected stimulus. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the priming type (perceptual, conceptual, and no priming) and emotional context (positive, negative, neutral) on IB with behavioral (IB, non-IB) and eye tracking measurements (latency of first fixation, total fixation time, and total fixation count in response to unexpected stimuli).

Methods

A total of 193 volunteered male university students were invited in the study. Three thematic videos (positive, negative, and neutral) were created to capture the IB. In the first stage, five pictures (a model dressed in different costumes Zorro as an unexpected stimulus, Vendetta, a judge, a doctor, and a worker) were shown to the participants for priming. In the second stage, a distractor task which involved 30 simple arithmetic operations were given. In the third stage, one of the thematic IB videos were shown to the participants, and then they answered the questions about those videos. Participants were assigned randomly to 9 different experimental conditions according to a 3 (Priming Type: Perceptual, Conceptual, No Priming) x 3 (Emotional Context: Positive, Negative, Neutral) factorial design. Finally, behavioral and eye tracking measurements were collected.

Results

Main and interaction effects of priming type and emotional contexts were not significant in terms of the behavioral measures. In addition, there were no significant differences between types of priming for eye tracking measures. However, there were significant differences between types of emotional contexts in all eye tracking measurements. In the negative context, participants made less total fixation, and looked shorter to unexpected stimulus than positive and neutral contexts. In addition, non-notifiers made less total fixation, and looked at unexpected stimulus for a shorter time compared to notifiers.

Conclusion

The fact of "looking without seeing" was again demonstrated experimentally. Priming and emotional context did not affect behavioral data, but eye movements were affected from the emotional context. Current findings showed a relation between emotion and attention.

Variability of attention bias in socially anxious adolescents: differences in fixation duration toward adult and adolescent face stimuli

Prior research on attention bias in anxious youth, often utilising a visual dot probe task, has yielded inconsistent findings, which may be due to how bias is assessed and/or variability in the phenomenon. The present study utilises eye gaze tracking to assess attention bias in socially anxious adolescents, and explores several methodological and within-subject factors that may contribute to variability in attention bias. Attention bias to threat was measured in forty-two treatment-seeking adolescents (age 12-16 years) diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. Bias scores toward emotional stimuli (vigilant attention) and bias scores away from emotional stimuli (avoidant attention) were explored. Bias scores changed between vigilance and avoidance within individuals and over the course of stimulus presentation. These differences were not associated with participant characteristics nor with self-reported social anxiety symptoms. However, clinician rated severity of social anxiety, explained a significant proportion of variance in the bias scores for adult, but not the adolescent, stimuli. Variability in attention bias among socially anxious adolescents is common and varies as a function of stimulus duration and type. Results may inform stimulus selection for future research.

The creation and validation of the Developmental Emotional Faces Stimulus Set

The Developmental Emotional Faces Stimulus Set (DEFSS) is designed to provide a standardized set of emotional stimuli that includes both child and adult faces and that has been validated by participants across a wide range of ages. This article describes the creation and validation of the DEFSS, which includes 404 validated facial photographs of people between 8 and 30 years old displaying five different emotional expressions: happy, angry, fearful, sad, and neutral. The emotions in all photographs were identified correctly by 86 % of the raters (minimum 55 %), and validity did not vary as a function of the age group of the model or of the raters, indicating that the pictures are equally appropriate for use across the entire age range. Strengths and limitations of the DEFSS are discussed.

Neural Correlates of Drug-Related Attentional Bias in Heroin Dependence

The attention of drug-dependent persons tends to be captured by stimuli associated with drug consumption. This involuntary cognitive process is considered as attentional bias (AB). AB has been hypothesized to have causal effects on drug abuse and drug relapse, but its underlying neural mechanisms are still unclear. This study investigated the neural basis of AB in abstinent heroin addicts (AHAs), combining event-related potential (ERP) analysis and source localization techniques. Electroencephalography data were collected in 21 abstinent heroin addicts and 24 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs) during a dot-probe task. In the task, a pair of drug-related image and neutral image was presented randomly in left and right side of the cross fixation, followed by a dot probe replacing one of the images. Behaviorally, AHAs had shorter reaction times (RTs) for the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition, whereas this was not the case in the HCs. This finding demonstrated the presence of AB towards drug cues in AHAs. Furthermore, the image-evoked ERPs in AHAs had significant shorter P1 latency compared to HCs, as well as larger N1, N2, and P2 amplitude, suggesting that drug-related stimuli might capture attention early and overall require more attentional resources in AHAs. The target-related P3 had significantly shorter latency and lower amplitude in the congruent than incongruent condition in AHAs compared to HCs. Moreover, source localization of ERP components revealed increased activity for AHAs as compared to HCs in the dorsal posterior cingulate cortex (dPCC), superior parietal lobule and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for image-elicited responses, and decreased activity in the occipital and the medial parietal lobes for target-elicited responses. Overall, the results of our study confirmed that AHAs may exhibit AB in drug-related contexts, and suggested that the bias might be related to an abnormal neural activity, both in early and late attention processing stages.