The Attentional Blink Paradigm in Individuals with High and Low Levels of Depression and Anxiety

Hannah Kathleen Skinner,Heather Ferguson

doi:10.5334/jeps.cm

Abstract

The attentional biases of individuals with high and low levels of depression and anxiety were tested using the Attentional Blink paradigm. A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task was used to detect biases in identification of emotionally valenced target images. The independent variables were depression, anxiety, lag of target stimulus, and emotional valence of target images. The dependent variables were accuracy, reaction times, and pupil dilation. As predicted, attentional biases were found for symptoms of both depression and anxiety, independently and co-morbidly, for dependent variables. The data suggest that there are both differences and similarities in the effects of symptoms of anxiety and depression on attentional biases around emotional stimuli.

Highlights

Both models imply an underlying bias within attentional selection, enabling researchers to investigate hypotheses of attentional bias
Whilst it is understood that people with depression have difficulty disengaging attentional resources from negative stimuli, it has been suggested that individuals with high levels of anxiety are biased to attend to threatening stimuli, and focus resources on actively avoiding them (Caseras, Garner, Bradley, & Mogg, 2007)
There is a large amount of literature arguing that in an emotional Stroop task, participants with anxiety disorders are slower at naming the colours of words relating to threatening stimuli compared with words unrelated to their concerns

Summary

Introduction

Both models imply an underlying bias within attentional selection, enabling researchers to investigate hypotheses of attentional bias. Whilst it is understood that people with depression have difficulty disengaging attentional resources from negative stimuli, it has been suggested that individuals with high levels of anxiety are biased to attend to threatening stimuli, and focus resources on actively avoiding them (Caseras, Garner, Bradley, & Mogg, 2007). Participants are slower at correctly identifying the colour of negative words, which may be caused by the negative meaning interfering with their attentional processing This attentional bias can be found in dot probe tasks. Participants with high levels of anxiety are slower to respond to negative emotional stimuli in the dot probe task (Derryberry & Reed, 1994) This finding has been replicated by Amin, Constable, and Canli (2004), who found that highly anxious individuals were slower to respond to negative stimuli, yet faster than depressed participants overall. Participants with high levels of anxiety were found to have slower reaction times for anxiety related words on the emotional Stroop task than those with low levels of anxiety (Richards et al, 1992)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion