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Electrophysiological correlates of attentional bias towards threat in children with high levels of social anxiety. COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2023; 23:190-202. [PMID: 36380263 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-022-01042-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 10/09/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Pediatric social anxiety is characterized by attentional biases (AB) towards social threats. This study used a new response-based calculation method to assess AB from response times (RT) in a visual dot-probe task and electroencephalography (EEG) to explore its electrophysiological correlates. Twenty, high socially anxious children (HSA) (mean [M ] = 10.1 years; standard deviation [SD] = 1.01) were compared with 22 healthy control children (HC) (M = 10.20 years; SD = 1.30) matched in age and gender. Participants had to identify targets preceded by disgust-neutral, happy-neutral, or neutral-neutral pairs of faces. RT and electroencephalograms were recorded throughout the task. While no significant group difference was found at the behavioral level, principal component analyses performed on EEG data revealed that event-related potentials for threat-related stimuli were impacted by social anxiety. Analyses indicated a larger N170 amplitude in response to all facial stimuli in HC when compared to the HSA. However, we found increased P2 amplitudes for disgust-neutral pairs compared with happy-neutral pairs in has only. Then, thasHSA group showed increased P2 amplitudes for targets following disgusted faces on the opposite side of the screen compared with targets appearing on the same side of the screen. These results suggest that HSA may display an increased anchorage of attention on threatening stimuli and need more effort to disengage their attentional focus from threats and to perform the task correctly. Taken together, our data confirmed the presence of AB in children with high levels of social anxiety, which are reflected by increased neural processing during the confrontation to faces depicting a potential threatening expression.
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Wang Y, Tang Z, Zhang X, Yang L. Auditory and cross-modal attentional bias toward positive natural sounds: Behavioral and ERP evidence. Front Hum Neurosci 2022; 16:949655. [PMID: 35967006 PMCID: PMC9372282 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.949655] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/21/2022] [Accepted: 06/28/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Recently, researchers have expanded the investigation into attentional biases toward positive stimuli; however, few studies have examined attentional biases toward positive auditory information. In three experiments, the present study employed an emotional spatial cueing task using emotional sounds as cues and auditory stimuli (Experiment 1) or visual stimuli (Experiment 2 and Experiment 3) as targets to explore whether auditory or visual spatial attention could be modulated by positive auditory cues. Experiment 3 also examined the temporal dynamics of cross-modal auditory bias toward positive natural sounds using event-related potentials (ERPs). The behavioral results of the three experiments consistently demonstrated that response times to targets were faster after positive auditory cues than they were after neutral auditory cues in the valid condition, indicating that healthy participants showed a selective auditory attentional bias (Experiment 1) and cross-modal attentional bias (Experiment 2 and Experiment 3) toward positive natural sounds. The results of Experiment 3 showed that N1 amplitudes were more negative after positive sounds than they were after neutral sounds, which further provided electrophysiological evidence that positive auditory information enhances attention at early stages in healthy adults. The results of the experiments performed in the present study suggest that humans exhibit an attentional bias toward positive natural sounds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yanmei Wang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
| | - Zhenwei Tang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Xiaoxuan Zhang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
| | - Libing Yang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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Diamond LM, Alley J. Rethinking minority stress: A social safety perspective on the health effects of stigma in sexually-diverse and gender-diverse populations. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2022; 138:104720. [PMID: 35662651 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104720] [Citation(s) in RCA: 64] [Impact Index Per Article: 32.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/30/2021] [Revised: 04/25/2022] [Accepted: 05/30/2022] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
For over two decades, the minority stress model has guided research on the health of sexually-diverse individuals (those who are not exclusively heterosexual) and gender-diverse individuals (those whose gender identity/expression differs from their birth-assigned sex/gender). According to this model, the cumulative stress caused by stigma and social marginalization fosters stress-related health problems. Yet studies linking minority stress to physical health outcomes have yielded mixed results, suggesting that something is missing from our understanding of stigma and health. Social safety may be the missing piece. Social safety refers to reliable social connection, inclusion, and protection, which are core human needs that are imperiled by stigma. The absence of social safety is just as health-consequential for stigmatized individuals as the presence of minority stress, because the chronic threat-vigilance fostered by insufficient safety has negative long-term effects on cognitive, emotional, and immunological functioning, even when exposure to minority stress is low. We argue that insufficient social safety is a primary cause of stigma-related health disparities and a key target for intervention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa M Diamond
- Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
| | - Jenna Alley
- Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
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Wang B, Peng X, Gao F, Zhang K, Zhang J, Wu L. Attachment Security Priming Delayed Negative Information-Related Attentional Disengagement Among Anxiously Attached Individuals: Evidence From Behavioral and Functional MRI Experiments. Front Psychol 2022; 13:913805. [PMID: 35756230 PMCID: PMC9218902 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.913805] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2022] [Accepted: 05/20/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Although attachment security has been found to attenuate people’s experience of unpleasant information, how it modulates the attentional process toward such information remains unknown. The present study examined this issue by employing the dot-probe task in functional MRI. After completing the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised questionnaire (ECR-R), 39 participants were asked to complete the dot-probe task in two conditions: the attachment security priming condition and neutral priming condition. The behavioral results revealed that individuals with high level of attachment anxiety exhibited larger attention disengagement from negative traits in the security priming condition than in the control condition. Correspondingly, the brain regions involved in attention regulation and shifting, such as the posterior cingulate and bilateral parietal area, were less activated among high anxiously attached individuals in the security priming condition. These results suggest a role of attachment security priming in regulating the emotional response in anxiously attached individuals during the attentional stage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beiyi Wang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Xinyuan Peng
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Fei Gao
- Department of Radiology, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China.,Department of Radiology, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, China
| | - Kaihua Zhang
- School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
| | - Jianxin Zhang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Lili Wu
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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