Contrasting two accounts of anxiety-linked attentional bias: selective attention to varying levels of stimulus threat intensity

Attentional bias to threat is modulated by stimulus content: an fNIRS study

People are evolutionarily predisposed to associate threat relevant stimuli with fear or aversiveness and show an attentional bias toward threat. Attentional bias modification (ABM) has been shown to reduce threat biases, while quantitative reviews assessing the effectiveness of bias modification yielded inconsistent results. The current study examined the relationship between the training effect of attentional bias to threat and the type of threatening stimuli. Twenty-two participants performed a modified dot-probe task while undergoing functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) imaging. Results indicated that there was a strong pattern of attentional avoidance among individuals in an animal but not human threat condition. Furthermore, findings from fNIRS confirmed that the influence from type of threatening stimulus would be modulated by cortical activation patterns, especially in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortices (vlPFC) and angular gyrus. Overall, these results suggest that stimulus-specific may play a major role in personalization of specific psychological interventions.

Coaction of Exercise and Eating Improvements Within a Behavioral Obesity Treatment: Directionality and Psychological Mechanisms

Purpose: Because coaction (a favorable change in one behavior increasing the probability of a similarly favorable change in another behavior) associated with health behaviors has been identified, directionalities of such relationships within weight-loss behaviors (e.g., exercise, healthy eating) and their theory-based psychological mechanisms requires more investigation. Method: Women with obesity and either disturbed mood (n = 61) or normal mood (n = 58) participated in a cogntive-behavioral weight-management treatment within a community setting. Analyses of both group differences, and mediation models using aggregate data of behavioral and psychological variables, were conducted. Results: Improvements in measures of self-regulation, self-efficacy, mood, exercise, and fruit/vegetable intake were significant overall; with fruit/vegetable increase greater in the disturbed mood group. The prediction of increase in fruits/vegetables from baseline-Month 6 by increase in exercise from bascline-Month 3 (β = .24) was stronger than effects of change in fruit/vegetabe intake on exercise (β = .16). Overall mediation models were significant where changes in self-regulation and self-efficacy were entered as serial mediators of predictions of fruit/vegetable change by change in exercise (R2= .35 and .32), and vice versa (R2= .24 and .23). Paths demonstrating effects through self-regulation change and self-efficacy change were significant in the prediction of eating and exercise changes, respectively. Conclusion: Contributions to advancements in behavioral theory and treatment curricula targeting self-regulation and self-efficacy to improve exercse-eating change relationships were suggested.  .

Perspectives on emotional memory images and the persistence of pain

Multiple influences prevent recovery from pain. Our viewpoint is that non-conscious emotional memory images (EMIs) triggers outdated stress responses contributing to the intractability of pain. In this perspectives article we explore the concept that EMIs contribute to the persistence of pain. We contend that psychophysiological "stress" responses, resulting from first-time, novel and unprecedented pernicious or adverse events form EMIs within very short time frames (split-second learning). Subsequently, these EMIs are re-triggered in daily living, "re-playing" stress responses. We postulate that EMIs continually "raise the alarm" to socio-ecological stimuli by re-triggering the HPA-axis and amplifying neural input associated with threat, fear, anxiety, and pain, creating a debilitating state of psychophysiological dis-ease. We position the EMI within a philosophical debate on the nature and locus of memory and explain how the EMI, irrespective of whether it is a "thing" or a metaphor, can create a basis of understanding for the client to grasp. We describe a therapeutic approach (Split-Second Unlearning) to "clear" EMIs and the "stickiness" of pain and help people embark on a healing journey. This involves surveillance of clients for micro-expression(s) signifying an in-the-moment stress response, representative of the presence of an EMI, and encouraging the client to become a curious observer within/of their own experience. This helps the client detach their EMI from its stress response. We contend that this occurs rapidly without the need to get bogged down in a whole-life narrative. We advocate further exploration of our EMI model of dis-ease in the context of intractable pain.

The importance of awareness in face processing: A critical review of interocular suppression studies

Human faces convey essential information for understanding others' mental states and intentions. The importance of faces in social interaction has prompted suggestions that some relevant facial features such as configural information, emotional expression, and gaze direction may promote preferential access to awareness. This evidence has predominantly come from interocular suppression studies, with the most common method being the Breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (bCFS) procedure, which measures the time it takes different stimuli to overcome interocular suppression. However, the procedures employed in such studies suffer from multiple methodological limitations. For example, they are unable to disentangle detection from identification processes, their results may be confounded by participants' response bias and decision criteria, they typically use small stimulus sets, and some of their results attributed to detecting high-level facial features (e.g., emotional expression) may be confounded by differences in low-level visual features (e.g., contrast, spatial frequency). In this article, we review the evidence from the bCFS procedure on whether relevant facial features promote access to awareness, discuss the main limitations of this very popular method, and propose strategies to address these issues.

Gaze behavior in social interactions between beach volleyball players—An exploratory approach

Previous research has indicated that social interactions and gaze behavior analyses in a group setting could be essential tools in accomplishing group objectives. However, only a few studies have examined the impact of social interactions on group dynamics in team sports and their influence on team performance. This study aimed to investigate the effects of game performance pressure on the gaze behavior within social interactions between beach volleyball players during game-like situations. Therefore, 18 expert beach volleyball players conducted a high and a low game performance pressure condition while wearing an eye tracking system. The results indicate that higher game performance pressure leads to more and longer fixation on teammates’ faces. A higher need for communication without misunderstandings could explain this adaptation. The longer and more frequent look at the face could improve the receiving of verbal and non-verbal information of the teammate’s face. Further, players showed inter-individual strategies to cope with high game performance pressure regarding their gaze behavior, for example, increasing the number of fixations and the fixation duration on the teammate’s face. Thereby, this study opens a new avenue for research on social interaction and how it is influenced in/through sport.

Transcranial direct current stimulation does not improve clinical and neurophysiological outcomes in panic disorder: A randomized sham-controlled trial

AIM

Emerging evidence suggests that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has anxiolytic effects and may enhance emotional processing of threat and reduce threat-related attentional bias. Panic disorder (PD) is considered to be a fear network disorder along with prefrontal activity alterations. We aim to assess the effect of tDCS on clinical and physiological parameters in PD for the first time.

METHODS

In this triple-blind randomized sham-controlled pilot study, 30 individuals with PD were allocated into active and sham groups to receive 10 sessions of tDCS targeting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex bilaterally at 2 mA for 20-min duration over 2 weeks. The clinical severity, threat-related attentional bias, interoceptive accuracy, and emotional recognition were assessed before, immediately after, and 1 month after tDCS.

RESULTS

Active tDCS, in comparison to sham, did not elicit more favorable clinical and neuropsychological/physiological outcomes in PD.

CONCLUSION

The present study provides the first clinical and neurobehavioral results of prefrontal tDCS in PD and indicates that prefrontal tDCS was not superior to sham in PD.

Avoidance of mild threat observed in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) using eye tracking

Attentional biases towards threat are assumed to be a causal factor in the development of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, findings have been inconsistent, and studies often examine single time-point bias during threat exposure, instead of across time. Attention to threat may shift throughout exposure (e.g., from initial engagement to avoidance), and research suggests that threat intensity and state anxiety influence attentional biases. No studies to our knowledge have examined biases across time and with varying threat intensity and state anxiety. Participants with GAD (n=38) and non-anxious controls (n=25) viewed emotional (high threat, mild threat, and positive) and neutral image pairs under calm and anxious mood states while their eye movements were tracked. Participants showed an initial orientation to emotional images, and, under the anxious mood induction, demonstrated a bias towards threatening images at first fixation and over time. Results suggest it may be normative to attend to threat cues over other stimuli while in an anxious state. Individuals with GAD uniquely showed a bias away from mild (but not high) threat images over time relative to controls. Implications for theories of attentional biases to threat and clinical implications for GAD and anxiety disorders broadly are discussed.

Mind's eye: The impact of spider presence and cognitive therapy on size estimation biases in spider phobia

The present study assessed the circumstances under which size estimation biases in spider phobia occur, and whether such biases are modifiable by treatment. Women with (n = 67) and without (n = 33) spider phobia approached a spider during a behavioral approach test (BAT). They provided size estimates of the spider both during and shortly after the BAT (with the spider in view, or not in view, respectively). Phobic women then received cognitive therapy or a placebo treatment and one week later they underwent a second BAT and provided size estimates of the same spider during and after the BAT. Phobic women reported larger size estimates than non-phobic women after, but not during, the BAT. Size estimates after, but not during, the BAT correlated with self-reported fear but not avoidance. Size estimates after, but not during, the BAT reduced from the first to second BAT in phobic women; an effect evident in both the cognitive therapy and placebo treatment conditions. Changes in size estimates were not associated with treatment-induced reductions in fear or avoidance. These results suggest that estimation biases in spider phobia are likely driven by non-perceptual processes. The clinical utility of size estimation measures is discussed.

Different Influences of Negative and Neutral Emotional Interference on Working Memory in Trait Anxiety

To examine the interaction of working memory (WM) type with emotional interference in trait anxiety, event-related potentials were measured in a combined WM and emotional task. Participants completed a delayed matching-to-sample task of WM, and emotional pictures were presented during the maintenance interval. The results indicated that negative affect interfered with spatial WM; task-related changes in amplitude were observed in the late positive potential (LPP) and slow waves in both the high and low anxiety groups. We also found an interaction among WM type, emotion, and trait anxiety such that participants with high levels of trait anxiety showed an opposite neural response to verbal and spatial WM tasks compared with individuals with low trait anxiety during the sustained brain activity involved in processing negative or neutral pictures in the delay phase. Our results increase our understanding of the influence of emotions on recognition and the vulnerability of those with trait anxiety to emotional stimuli.

Prospective Evaluation of Association Between Negative Emotions and Heart Failure Symptom Severity

Background

Prior studies of symptoms in heart failure (HF) were largely cross-sectional and symptoms were measured using retrospective recall. Because negative emotions influence information processing, retrospective symptom reports by patients with depressive symptoms and anxiety may be biased. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there are differences in patterns of symptom changes, measured prospectively, over 15 days by levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety.

Methods

HF patients (N=52) rated daily symptom severity for shortness of breath (SOB), fatigue, sleep disturbance, and edema over 15 days on a 10-point visual analogue scale. Patients were grouped into higher vs lower levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety, respectively, based on median scores of Brief Symptom Inventory subscales. Latent growth curve modeling was used to examine whether patterns of symptom changes over 15 days differed in higher vs lower levels of depressive symptom and anxiety groups.

Results

Those in the higher depressive symptom group had lower levels of baseline symptom severity in SOB (β: -1.46), fatigue (β: -1.71), sleep disturbance (β: -1.78), and edema (β: -1.97) than those in the lower depressive symptom group. However, there were no significant differences in rates of changes in the severity of any of the four symptoms between groups. Anxiety was not associated with baseline severity of symptoms or rates of changes in any of the four symptoms.

Conclusion

Depressive symptoms, but not anxiety, were associated with daily symptom experience. HF patients with higher levels of depressive symptoms may perceive their symptom severity differently than patients with lower levels of depressive symptoms.

The effects of left DLPFC tDCS on emotion regulation, biased attention, and emotional reactivity to negative content

The potentiation of neural activity in lateral prefrontal regions via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can reduce patterns of biased attention for threat and may facilitate intentional emotion regulation. The current study sought to determine whether left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex tDCS, in combination with intentional down-regulation of emotional responses would reduce negative appraisals of aversive content during emotional regulation (assessed during online tDCS), reduce patterns of biased attention and attention bias variability (assessed offline), and attenuate spontaneous (uninstructed) emotional reactivity to negative content (assessed offline) above tDCS or intentional down-regulation of emotions in isolation. Healthy participants (n = 116) were allocated to one of four experimental conditions involving either active or sham tDCS, combined with an either a down-regulate or maintain emotion regulation task. Attention bias/bias variability was assessed with an attentional probe task, and emotional reactivity was assessed in a negative video viewing task. tDCS did not affect the appraisals of negative stimuli during emotion regulation, and there were no effects on attention bias/bias variability. However, tDCS did attenuate emotional reactivity. Those receiving active stimulation showed smaller elevations in negative mood in response to viewing aversive video content compared with sham. The present findings are consistent with the potential of left frontal tDCS to attenuate negative emotional reactions to aversive content but provide no support for tDCS enhancement of emotion regulation, nor its impact on attention bias or attention bias variability.

Consistent behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for rapid perceptual discrimination among the six human basic facial expressions

The extent to which the six basic human facial expressions perceptually differ from one another remains controversial. For instance, despite the importance of rapidly decoding fearful faces, this expression often is confused with other expressions, such as Surprise in explicit behavioral categorization tasks. We quantified implicit visual discrimination among rapidly presented facial expressions with an oddball periodic visual stimulation approach combined with electroencephalography (EEG), testing for the relationship with behavioral explicit measures of facial emotion discrimination. We report robust facial expression discrimination responses bilaterally over the occipito-temporal cortex for each pairwise expression change. While fearful faces presented as repeated stimuli led to the smallest deviant responses from all other basic expressions, deviant fearful faces were well discriminated overall and to a larger extent than expressions of Sadness and Anger. Expressions of Happiness did not differ quantitatively as much in EEG as for behavioral subjective judgments, suggesting that the clear dissociation between happy and other expressions, typically observed in behavioral studies, reflects higher-order processes. However, this expression differed from all others in terms of scalp topography, pointing to a qualitative rather than quantitative difference. Despite this difference, overall, we report for the first time a tight relationship of the similarity matrices across facial expressions obtained for implicit EEG responses and behavioral explicit measures collected under the same temporal constraints, paving the way for new approaches of understanding facial expression discrimination in developmental, intercultural, and clinical populations.

Attentional Bias in specific symmetry and cleaning dimensions of obsessive-compulsive disorder

Attentional bias (AB) refers to increased allocation of attention on threat stimuli when compared to neutral stimuli. It is not clear if AB occurs in subjects with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We tested AB for symmetry and cleaning symptoms of OCD. Sixty-two patients with OCD and 40 healthy controls matched by gender, age and IQ, completed a computerized dot-probe task where two pictures (with symmetry or cleaning related content) were shown. The probe appeared in the location previously occupied by one of the pictures. Within-subjects linear mixed-effect models were used to investigate the effects of the factors: group (patients vs controls), OCD dimension (cleaning vs symmetry), task condition (neutral, congruent and incongruent), and the interaction among them. We also correlated AB scores with the clinical and demographic variables. No positive interaction resulted among the factors, but positive results were observed in group and condition, separately. Patients were significantly slower than controls (p-value = 0.014) (an effect that was accounted for by depression and anxiety symptoms and comorbidity) and the neutral condition was significantly faster when compared the other two conditions (congruent and incongruent, p-value = 0.013). No association was found between AB scores and clinical symptoms. There was no AB toward specific, content-related, stimuli in this sample of OCD patients.

Subjective Cognitive Impairment in 55-65-Year-Old Adults Is Associated with Negative Affective Symptoms, Neuroticism, and Poor Quality of Life

Although subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) is increasingly recognized clinically and in research as a risk factor for mild cognitive impairment and dementia (particularly Alzheimer’s disease), it is etiologically heterogeneous and potentially treatable. Compared to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, SCI however remains poorly characterized with debate continuing regarding its clinical relevance. The primary aim of this study was to improve the characterization of SCI within the general public by investigating functions sometimes omitted clinically or in research, namely visual attention-related information processing speed (RT) and its intra-individual variability (IIV_RT), general cognition, depression, anxiety, memory, quality of life (QOL), and neuroticism. Compared to individuals without SCI, those with SCI were more likely to reveal higher scores of anxiety, depression, and neuroticism and poorer perceived physical, psychological, and environmental QOL. Within-group analysis identified no significant relationships between any of the above variables for the non-SCI group whereas for the SCI group, poorer Cognitive Change Index scores were significantly correlated with slower RT, raised IIV_RT, poorer memory, negative affective symptoms, higher neuroticism scores, and poorer QOL. This indicates that reports of perceived memory changes in SCI can also be associated with other characteristics, namely objectively measured detrimental change in other aspects of brain function and behavior. This outcome emphasizes the importance of a multi-function approach to characterizing and understanding SCI. Thus, although the effect of RT and IIV_RT is not strong enough to differentiate SCI from non-SCI at group level, slowing and raised IIV_RT do appear to characterize some people with SCI.

Seeing Eye to Eye With Threat: Atypical Threat Bias in Children With 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome

Individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) show high rates of anxiety associated with their increased risk of developing schizophrenia. Biased attention is associated with anxiety and is important to investigate in those with 22q11DS given this association. We analyzed attention bias to emotional faces in 7- to 17-year olds with 22q11DS and typically developing controls (TD) using a dot probe threat bias paradigm. We measured response time, eye tracking, and pupilometry. Those with 22q11DS showed no significant changes in early versus late trials, whereas those who were TD showed differing patterns in both gaze and pupilometry over time. The patterns in those who are TD may indicate adaptation that is lacking or slower in individuals with 22q11DS.

Maternal prenatal and early postnatal distress and child stress responses at age 6

Individuals differ in their physiological and behavioral stress responses. Alterations in these responses have been associated with mental and physical health. Therefore, it is important to understand how stress responses develop. This study investigated whether in a healthy, non-risk population, 6-year-old's physiological (cortisol) and behavioral (gazing) stress responses were associated with stress early in the child's life, in the form of maternal prenatal and early postnatal distress. Additionally, associations between the two stress responses were studied. At age 6, children (n = 149; M_age = 6.09; 70 girls) in a longitudinal project that started prenatally (n = 193), participated in a social evaluative stress test (Children's Reactions to Evaluation Stress Test, CREST) in front of a judge. To operationalize physiological stress responses six cortisol saliva samples were collected and cortisol stress reactivity and total stress cortisol scores were calculated. To operationalize behavioral stress responses, gazing at the judge during the stress test was observed. Maternal prenatal distress (week 37) was measured using questionnaires and physiological measures, that is, cortisol saliva samples. Early postnatal maternal distress (first 6 months) was measured using questionnaires. Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that less maternal prenatal fear of giving birth, higher maternal prenatal evening cortisol concentrations, and more maternal feelings of anxiety in the first 6 postnatal months were all uniquely associated with higher total stress cortisol concentrations in children at age 6. Additionally, correlations indicated that children with higher cortisol stress reactivity gazed less in the direction of the judge. Results indicate that maternal prenatal and early postnatal distress are associated with children's later hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis functioning and that in children gazing and physiological stress reactivity are related. Lay summary We examined whether maternal stress and anxiety during pregnancy, as measured by means of maternal self-reports and saliva cortisol samples, as well as maternal stress and anxiety in the first 6 months of the child's life, measured using maternal self-reports, were associated with children's physiological (cortisol) and behavioral (gazing) responses during a stressful laboratory situation at the age of 6. Results showed that mothers with higher levels of distress in late pregnancy and/or the early postnatal period had children with higher cortisol concentrations during the stressful situation. This suggests that maternal prenatal and early postnatal distress are associated with children's later hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis functioning.

Attentional control and estimation of the probability of positive and negative events

People high in negative affect tend to think negative events are more likely than positive events ("probability bias"). Studies have found that weak attentional control exaggerates another negative affect-related cognitive bias - attentional bias - but it is not clear why this might be. We therefore wanted to know whether weak attentional control would be related to probability bias too. Four studies, with predominantly female student samples (N = 857), revealed correlations of around -.38 between attentional control and probability bias. This remained significant when trait anxiety and depression were controlled; there were no interactions between attentional control and negative affect. Studies 3 and 4 found that attentional control's relationship with probability bias was partly mediated by emotion regulation ability. These results suggest attentional control is important for regulating affect-related cognitive biases, and for emotion regulation in general. Furthermore, because cognitive biases are thought to be important for maintaining emotional disorders, these results are also consistent with weak attentional control being a risk factor for these disorders.

Heterogeneity of the Anxiety-Related Attention Bias: A Review and Working Model for Future Research

The anxiety-related attention bias (AB) has been studied for several decades as a clinically-relevant output of the dynamic and complex threat detection-response system. Despite research enthusiasm for the construct of AB, current theories and measurement approaches cannot adequately account for the growing body of mixed, contradictory, and null findings. Drawing on clinical, neuroscience, and animal models, we argue that the apparent complexity and contradictions in the empirical literature can be attributed to the field's failure to clearly conceptualize AB heterogeneity and the dearth of studies in AB that consider additional cognitive mechanisms in anxiety, particularly disruptions in threat-safety discrimination and cognitive control. We review existing research and propose a working model of AB heterogeneity positing that AB may be best conceptualized as multiple subtypes of dysregulated processing of and attention to threat anchored in individual differences in threat-safety discrimination and cognitive control. We review evidence for this working model and discuss how it can be used to advance knowledge of AB mechanisms and inform personalized prevention and intervention approaches.

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.

A relationship between weak attentional control and cognitive distortions, explained by negative affect

People high in negative affect (anxiety or depression) show cognitive distortions, specific thinking errors which contribute to the maintenance of their condition. It is thought that weak attentional control is a risk factor for negative affect and emotional disorders, because weak attentional control exaggerates the expression of attentional bias, another cognitive feature of emotional disorders. We wondered whether weak attentional control might similarly exaggerate the expression of cognitive distortions. In two samples of students from Turkey and the UK, we found that weak attentional control was indeed related to cognitive distortions, but this relationship was explained by both variables’ relationships with negative affect. This suggests that weak attentional control, while related to negative affect, does not necessarily exaggerate all of its cognitive features. There seems to be a limit on the affective consequences of poor attentional control, which may limit its clinical usefulness as a risk factor for emotional disorders.

A quantitative meta-analysis of fMRI studies investigating emotional processing in excessive worriers: Application of activation likelihood estimation analysis

BACKGROUND

Excessive worry is a highly impairing cognitive activity which features a range of psychological disorders. Investigations of its disturbed underlying neural mechanisms have presented largely heterogeneous results. This quantitative neuroimaging meta-analysis aims to identify consistent functional disturbances in emotional processing associated with excessive worry across previously published studies.

METHODS

We used the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method to test for significant convergence across findings of 16 neuroimaging experiments reporting functional aberrations during emotional processing between individuals experiencing high versus normal levels of worry.

RESULTS

Results demonstrated convergent aberrations in high compared to normal worriers mainly in a left-hemispheric cluster comprising parts of the middle frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus and anterior insula. Behavioral characterization indicated the identified cluster to be associated with language processing and memory, while meta-analytic connectivity mapping yielded strong functional connections between the observed convergent regions and parts of the salience network as well as the default mode network.

LIMITATIONS

The ALE method cannot consider findings based on regions of interest analyses and studies without significant group differences.

CONCLUSION

Our results indicate that in response to emotional contexts worry prone individuals exhibit disturbed functioning in brain areas which are possibly associated with deviant inner speech processes experienced by these individuals. The observed clusters may further constitute key nodes within interacting neural networks that support internally and externally oriented cognition and control the dynamic interplay among these processes.

Exploring attentional bias towards threatening faces in chimpanzees using the dot probe task

Primates have evolved to rapidly detect and respond to danger in their environment. However, the mechanisms involved in attending to threatening stimuli are not fully understood. The dot-probe task is one of the most widely used experimental paradigms to investigate these mechanisms in humans. However, to date, few studies have been conducted in non-human primates. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the dot-probe task can measure attentional biases towards threatening faces in chimpanzees. Eight adult chimpanzees participated in a series of touch screen dot-probe tasks. We predicted faster response times towards chimpanzee threatening faces relative to neutral faces and faster response times towards faces of high threat intensity (scream) than low threat intensity (bared teeth). Contrary to prediction, response times for chimpanzee threatening faces relative to neutral faces did not differ. In addition, we found no difference in response times for faces of high and low threat intensity. In conclusion, we found no evidence that the touch screen dot-probe task can measure attentional biases specifically towards threatening faces in our chimpanzees. Methodological limitations of using the task to measure emotional attention in human and non-human primates, including stimulus threat intensity, emotional state, stimulus presentation duration and manual responding are discussed.

Affect-Driven Attention Biases as Animal Welfare Indicators: Review and Methods

Attention bias describes the differential allocation of attention towards one stimulus compared to others. In humans, this bias can be mediated by the observer's affective state and is implicated in the onset and maintenance of affective disorders such as anxiety. Affect-driven attention biases (ADABs) have also been identified in a few other species. Here, we review the literature on ADABs in animals and discuss their utility as welfare indicators. Despite a limited research effort, several studies have found that negative affective states modulate attention to negative (i.e., threatening) cues. ADABs influenced by positive-valence states have also been documented in animals. We discuss methods for measuring ADAB and conclude that looking time, dot-probe, and emotional spatial cueing paradigms are particularly promising. Research is needed to test them with a wider range of species, investigate attentional scope as an indicator of affect, and explore the possible causative role of attention biases in determining animal wellbeing. Finally, we argue that ADABs might not be best-utilized as indicators of general valence, but instead to reveal specific emotions, motivations, aversions, and preferences. Paying attention to the human literature could facilitate these advances.

Dynamic Measures of Anxiety-Related Threat Bias: Links to Stress Reactivity

Exaggerated attention to threatening information, or the threat bias, has been implicated in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Recent research has highlighted methodological limitations in threat bias measures, such as temporal insensitivity, leading to the development of novel metrics that capture change and variability in threat bias over time. These metrics, however, have rarely been examined in non-clinical samples. The present study aimed to explore the utility of these trial-level metrics in predicting anxiety-related stress reactivity (stress-induced negative mood state) in trait anxious adults (N = 52). Following a stressor, participants completed the dot probe task to generate threat bias scores. Stress reactivity was measured via stress-induced changes in subjective mood state. More variability in trial-level bias scores and greater bias away from threat (both mean and peak negative trial-level bias scores) predicted increased stress reactivity. The temporal characteristics of threat bias and implications for clinically-relevant measurement are discussed.

Estradiol moderates the relationship between state-trait anxiety and attentional bias to threat in women

Anxiety disorders are characterized by impaired fear extinction and heightened attentional allocation to threatening stimuli. The sex hormones estradiol and progesterone modulate fear extinction in female rats and women; whether these hormones are similarly related to attentional biases to threat has not been examined. In the present study 74 women (53 cycling, 21 using hormonal contraception), and a comparison group of 30 men, completed standard assessments of state-trait anxiety, as well symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, followed by a computerized assessment of attentional bias, the dot-probe task. Women's endogenous estradiol and progesterone levels were ascertained by a blood sample. No differences in attentional bias were found dependent on sex or hormonal contraceptive use. Estradiol was the only variable measured that was independently positively correlated with attentional bias to threat. Regression analyses revealed a bi-directional relationship between state-trait anxiety, symptoms of anxiety and stress, and attentional bias that was moderated by estradiol, such that a positive relationship was observed amongst women with higher estradiol, and a negative relationship was observed amongst women with lower estradiol. Together, these results indicate that under conditions of anxiety and stress, women may attend to threat differently depending on endogenous estradiol levels, being avoidant when estradiol is lower, and vigilant when estradiol is higher. A more nuanced understanding of the role for attention in anxiety disorders amongst women may be developed by taking hormonal status into consideration.

The dot-probe task to measure emotional attention: A suitable measure in comparative studies?

For social animals, attending to and recognizing the emotional expressions of other individuals is of crucial importance for their survival and likely has a deep evolutionary origin. Gaining insight into how emotional expressions evolved as adaptations over the course of evolution can be achieved by making direct cross-species comparisons. To that extent, experimental paradigms that are suitable for investigating emotional processing across species need to be developed and evaluated. The emotional dot-probe task, which measures attention allocation toward emotional stimuli, has this potential. The task is implicit, and subjects need minimal training to perform the task successfully. Findings in nonhuman primates, although scarce, show that they, like humans, have an attentional bias toward emotional stimuli. However, the wide literature on human studies has shown that different factors can have important moderating effects on the results. Due to the large heterogeneity of this literature, these moderating effects often remain unnoticed. We here review this literature and show that subject characteristics and differences in experimental designs affect the results of the dot-probe task. We conclude with specific recommendations regarding these issues that are particularly relevant to take into consideration when applying this paradigm to study animals.

Emotional intelligence and attentional bias for threat-related emotion under stress

Emotional intelligence (EI) can buffer potentially harmful effects of situational and chronic stressors to safeguard psychological wellbeing (e.g., Mikolajczak, Petrides, Coumans & Luminet, ), yet understanding how and when EI operates to promote adaptation remains a research priority. We explored whether EI (both trait and ability) modulated early attentional processing of threat-related emotion under conditions of stress. Using a dot probe paradigm, eye movement (fixation to emotive facial stimuli, relative to neutral) and manual reaction time data were collected from 161 adults aged 18-57 years (mean age = 25.24; SD = 8.81) exposed to either a stressful (failure task) or non-stressful (control) situation. Whilst emotion management ability and trait wellbeing corresponded to avoidance of negative emotion (angry and sad respectively), high trait sociability and emotionality related to a bias for negative emotions. With most effects not restricted to stressful conditions, it is unclear whether EI underscores 'adaptive' processing, which carries implications for school-based social and emotional learning programs.

Do not look away! Spontaneous frontal EEG theta/beta ratio as a marker for cognitive control over attention to mild and high threat

BACKGROUND

Low spontaneous EEG theta/beta ratio (TBR) is associated with greater executive control. Their role in regulation of attentional bias for stimuli of different threat-levels is unknown.

OBJECTIVES

To provide the first relations between frontal TBR, trait anxiety and attentional bias to mildly and highly threatening stimuli at different processing-stages.

METHODS

Seventy-four healthy volunteers completed spontaneous EEG measurement, a self-report trait anxiety questionnaire and a dot-probe task with stimuli of different threat-level and 200 and 500 ms cue-target delays.

RESULTS

Participants with high TBR directed attention towards mildly threatening and avoided highly threatening pictures. Moreover, the most resilient participants, (low TBR and low trait anxiety) showed attention towards highly threatening stimuli. There were no effects of delay.

CONCLUSIONS

These data confirm that executive control is crucial for the study of threat-related attentional bias and further support the notion that TBR is a marker of cognitive control over emotional information.

Types of Anxiety and Depression: Theoretical Assumptions and Development of the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire

The present paper is addressed to (1) the validation of a recently proposed typology of anxiety and depression, and (2) the presentation of a new tool—the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire (ADQ)—based on this typology. Empirical data collected across two stages—construction and validation—allowed us to offer the final form of the ADQ, designed to measure arousal anxiety, apprehension anxiety, valence depression, anhedonic depression, and mixed types of anxiety and depression. The results support the proposed typology of anxiety and depression and provide evidence that the ADQ is a reliable and valid self-rating measure of affective types, and accordingly its use in scientific research is recommended.

Attentional bias during emotional processing: evidence from an emotional flanker task using IAPS

Attention is biased towards threat-related stimuli. In three experiments, we investigated the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this processing bias. An emotional flanker task simultaneously presented affective or neutral pictures from the international affective picture system database either as central response-relevant stimuli or surrounding response-uninformative flankers. Participants' response times to central stimuli was measured. The attentional bias was observed when stimuli were presented either for 1500 ms (Experiment 1) or 500 ms (Experiment 2). The threat-related attentional bias held regardless of the stimuli competing for attention even when presentation time was further reduced to 200 ms (Experiment 3). The results indicate that automatic and controlled mechanisms may interact to modulate the orientation of attention to threat. The data presented here shed new light on the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this long investigated by still largely unknown processing bias.

Social support coping style predicts women's cortisol in the laboratory and daily life: the moderating role of social attentional biases

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Social stress and associated coping responses can profoundly influence women's stress physiology and health. Implicit social attentional biases can also influence psychological and physiological stress responses. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a coping style characterized by greater use of social support predicts indices of cortisol activity in laboratory and daily life contexts among female university students. We hypothesized that the relation of this coping style to cortisol activity would be moderated by women's attentional biases.

METHODS

Seventy-four women (M_age= 19.44, range: 17.8-27.8, 64% White) completed an interpersonal stress task and an attentional bias task in the lab, along with a self-report coping inventory. Participants provided five saliva samples during the lab protocol, followed by three saliva samples per day for three consecutive weekdays. Outcome measures included cortisol response to lab tasks (AUCg), diurnal cortisol slope, diurnal AUCg, and cortisol awakening response (CARi).

RESULTS

A coping style characterized by greater use of social support predicted lower lab AUCg and lower, flatter average diurnal cortisol slope for women with attentional avoidance compared to women with attentional vigilance (ps < .05).

CONCLUSIONS

Responding to stress by using social support is linked to lower cortisol responses to social stress and diurnal cortisol activity for women with implicit avoidance of social threat cues.

For whom the bell tolls: Neurocognitive individual differences in the acute stress-reduction effects of an attention bias modification game for anxiety

The efficacy of attention bias modification training (ABMT) for anxiety is debated, in part because individual differences in task engagement and pre-training threat bias impact training efficacy. In the present study, an engaging, gamified ABMT mobile application, or "app," was utilized in 42 (21 females) trait-anxious adults. EEG was recorded during pre- and post-training threat bias assessment to generate scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting neurocognitive responses to threat. Following app play (ABMT versus placebo), subjective anxiety and stress responses (observed and self-reported) were measured. ABMT, versus placebo, resulted in improved behavioral performance during the stress task for females, and in potentiation of the N2 ERP to threat for males, suggesting increased attention control. Training groups did not differ in self-reported anxiety. ABMT also resulted in improved performance during the stress task among those evidencing specific pre-training ERP responses: decreased P1, suggesting less attention allocation, but potentiated N170, suggesting enhanced attention selection and discrimination. Differences in behavioral threat bias did not moderate training effects. Results suggest that efficient allocation of attention to threat combined with enhanced discrimination between threat and non-threat may facilitate stress-reduction effects of ABMT. Targeting neurocognitive responses to threat to personalize ABMT and develop more effective methods of treatment delivery, such as gamification, are discussed.

Mechanisms of Selective Attention in Generalized Anxiety Disorder

A well-established literature has identified different selective attentional orienting mechanisms underlying anxiety-related attentional bias, such as engagement and disengagement of attention. These mechanisms are thought to contribute to the onset and maintenance of anxiety disorders. However, conclusions to date have relied heavily on experimental work from subclinical samples. We therefore investigated individuals with diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), healthy volunteers, and individuals with high trait anxiety (but not meeting GAD diagnostic criteria). Across two experiments we found faster disengagement from negative (angry and fearful) faces in GAD groups, an effect opposite to that expected on the basis of the subclinical literature. Together these data challenge current assumptions that we can generalize, to those with GAD, the pattern of selective attentional orienting to threat found in subclinical groups. We suggest a decisive two-stage experiment identifying stimuli of primary salience in GAD, then using these to reexamine orienting mechanisms across groups.

Expectancy biases in fear and anxiety and their link to biases in attention

Healthy individuals often exhibit prioritized processing of aversive information, as manifested in enhanced orientation of attention to threatening stimuli compared with neutral items. In contrast to this adaptive behavior, anxious, fearful, and phobic individuals show exaggerated attention biases to threat. In addition, they overestimate the likelihood of encountering their feared stimulus and the severity of the consequences; both are examples of expectancy biases. The co-occurrence of attention and expectancy biases in fear and anxiety raises the question about causal influences. Herein, we summarize findings related to expectancy biases in fear and anxiety, and their association with attention biases. We suggest that evidence calls for more comprehensive research strategies in the investigation of mutual influences between expectancy and attention biases, as well as their combined effects on fear and anxiety. Moreover, both types of bias need to be related to other types of distorted information processing commonly observed in fear and anxiety (e.g., memory and interpretation biases). Finally, we propose new research directions that may be worth considering in developing more effective treatments for anxiety disorders.

The effects of valence and arousal on time perception in individuals with social anxiety

Time distortion in individuals with social anxiety has been defined as the seemingly slower passage of time in social situations and is related to both arousal and valence. Consequently, adaptive behavior is disrupted and interpersonal situations avoided. We explored the effects of valence and arousal on time distortion in individuals with social anxiety. Participants were assigned to two groups, High Anxiety (HA) and Low Anxiety (LA), presented with four types of facial expression stimuli (positive-high arousal, positive-low arousal, negative-high arousal, and negative-low arousal), and asked to estimate the duration of stimulus presentation. Results indicated that, relative to other stimuli, the HA and LA groups perceived longer presentation for high-arousal negative and low-arousal positive stimuli, respectively. These findings suggest that anxious individuals' time distortion was more severe in situations that evoked high arousal and involved negative emotion.

Benefits of using culturally unfamiliar stimuli in ambiguous emotion identification: A cross-cultural study

A novel emotion recognition task that employs photos of a Japanese mask representing a highly ambiguous stimulus was evaluated. As non-Asians perceive and/or label emotions differently from Asians, we aimed to identify patterns of task-performance in non-Asian healthy volunteers with a view to future patient studies. The Noh mask test was presented to 42 adult German participants. Reaction times and emotion attribution patterns were recorded. To control for emotion identification abilities, a standard emotion recognition task was used among others. Questionnaires assessed personality traits. Finally, results were compared to age- and gender-matched Japanese volunteers. Compared to other tasks, German participants displayed slowest reaction times on the Noh mask test, indicating higher demands of ambiguous emotion recognition. They assigned more positive emotions to the mask than Japanese volunteers, demonstrating culture-dependent emotion identification patterns. As alexithymic and anxious traits were associated with slower reaction times, personality dimensions impacted on performance, as well. We showed an advantage of ambiguous over conventional emotion recognition tasks. Moreover, we determined emotion identification patterns in Western individuals impacted by personality dimensions, suggesting performance differences in clinical samples. Due to its properties, the Noh mask test represents a promising tool in the differential diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, e.g. schizophrenia.

Intersubject variability in fearful face processing: the link between behavior and neural activation

Stimuli that signal threat show considerable variability in the extents to which they enhance behavior, even among healthy individuals. However, the neural underpinning of this behavioral variability is not well understood. By manipulating expectation of threat in an fMRI study of fearful versus neutral face categorization, we uncovered a network of areas underlying variability in threat processing in healthy adults. We explicitly altered expectations by presenting face images at three different expectation levels: 80 %, 50 %, and 20 %. Subjects were instructed to report as quickly and accurately as possible whether the face was fearful (signaled threat) or not. An uninformative cue preceded each face by 4 s. By taking the difference between reaction times (RTs) to fearful and neutral faces, we quantified an overall fear RT bias (i.e., faster to fearful than to neutral faces) for each subject. This bias correlated positively with late-trial fMRI activation (8 s after the face) during unexpected-fearful-face trials in bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the left subgenual cingulate cortex, and the right caudate nucleus, and correlated negatively with early-trial fMRI activation (4 s after the cue) during expected-neutral-face trials in bilateral dorsal striatum and the right ventral striatum. These results demonstrate that the variability in threat processing among healthy adults is reflected not only in behavior, but also in the magnitude of activation in medial prefrontal and striatal regions that appear to encode affective value.