Applying Computational Model Approach to Examine Unique and Common Neural Correlates of Threat Processing in Pediatric Irritability and Anxiety

Abstract

Irritability and anxiety are impairing and often comorbid clinical phenotypes in youth. Aberrant behavioral and neural attentional processing to threat is thought to underlie both phenotypes. Progress on understanding the mechanism is substantially hindered by limitations in widely used methods to quantify attention bias. Previous work suggests that drift-diffusion models (DDM), and specifically extra-time parameter, may be promising to investigate latent mechanisms of attention bias. This study used computational models to examine associations between threat-related processing and neural function in a transdiagnostic sample of youth.