Attentional Bias For Negative Information Research Articles

Attentional bias towards negative stimuli in healthy individuals and the effects of trait anxiety

This study aimed to investigate the time course of attentional bias for negative information in healthy individuals and to assess the associated influence of trait anxiety. Thirty-eight healthy volunteers performed an emotional dot-probe task with pairs of negative and neutral scenes, presented for either 1 or 2 s and followed by a target placed at the previous location of either negative or neutral stimulus. Analyses included eye movements during the presentation of the scenes and response times associated with target localization. In a second step, analyses focused on the influence of trait anxiety. While there was no significant difference at the behavioral level, the eye-tracking data revealed that negative information held longer attention than neutral stimuli once fixated. This initial maintenance bias towards negative pictures then increased with increasing trait anxiety. However, at later processing stages, only individuals with the highest trait anxiety appeared to fixate longer on negative pictures than neutral pictures, individuals with low trait anxiety showing the opposite pattern. This study provides novel evidence that healthy individuals display an attentional maintenance bias towards negative stimuli, which is associated with trait anxiety.

Music to my ears, goal for my eyes? Music reward modulates gaze disengagement from negative stimuli in dysphoria

Attentional bias for negative information, i.e. difficulties in disengagement from negative stimuli, is considered to be one of the core mechanisms involved in the onset and maintenance of depression. However, current attention training procedures aimed at reducing this bias have shown limited success. In addition to the reliability and validity concerns generated by the use of dot-probe paradigm in these procedures, an important factor is the limited consideration of motivational influences in the use of attention training. Therefore, in the current study we examined whether goal stimuli, reinforced with music reward, can modulate attention for negative information in dysphoric individuals. Using a novel attention task which measures gaze disengagement from negative faces, we found that dysphoric individuals displayed greater difficulties in disengaging eye-gaze from negative and directing it towards standard neutral stimuli, as compared to non-dysphorics. However, when using reward-reinforced goal stimuli, dysphoric individuals were as quick as non-dysphorics in disengaging attention from negative stimuli in order to engage with goal-related stimuli. These results provide preliminary evidence for the modulating role of music-reinforced goals in the attention system of depressed individuals, and highlight how music-reinforced goals can be incorporated in current attention training procedures to improve outcomes.

Compounded Deficits

Attentional dysfunction is commonly found in depressed individuals in the form of impairment on measures of selective attention as well as attentional biases for negative information. Although a relationship between nonvalenced and valenced aspects of attention has been suggested based on theory, functional neuroanatomy, and studies in other populations, this relationship has not been explicitly explored in depressed individuals. A total of 91 individuals who were currently depressed, formerly depressed, or never depressed completed tasks assessing neuropsychological functioning and attentional bias. Depression status was associated with decreased selective attention (but not set shifting) and stronger attention biases. Selective attention was also found to mediate the relationship between group status and attentional bias, but only in currently depressed individuals. These findings suggest depression is associated with specific impairments in attention and moreover that impairments in nonvalenced aspects of attention are associated with attentional bias to valenced stimuli in currently depressed individuals.

Anxiety sensitivity is associated with attentional bias for pain-related information in healthy children and adolescents.

This investigation explored the association between anxiety sensitivity and attentional bias for threatening information in children and adolescents (N = 40). Participants completed a pictorial version of the visual-probe task, featuring pain-related, health-threat and general-threat images presented for 500 and 1250 ms. Regression analyses revealed significant associations between anxiety sensitivity and attentional bias towards pain-related images presented for 500 ms and between state anxiety and attentional bias towards general-threat images presented for 1250 ms. These results suggest that in children and adolescents, anxiety sensitivity is associated with attentional bias for negative information of personal relevance.

Visual search attentional bias modification reduced social phobia in adolescents

Background and objectivesAn attentional bias for negative information plays an important role in the development and maintenance of (social) anxiety and depression, which are highly prevalent in adolescence. Attention Bias Modification (ABM) might be an interesting tool in the prevention of emotional disorders. The current study investigated whether visual search ABM might affect attentional bias and emotional functioning in adolescents. MethodsA visual search task was used as a training paradigm; participants (n = 16 adolescents, aged 13–16) had to repeatedly identify the only smiling face in a 4 × 4 matrix of negative emotional faces, while participants in the control condition (n = 16) were randomly allocated to one of three placebo training versions. An assessment version of the task was developed to directly test whether attentional bias changed due to the training. Self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms and self-esteem were measured pre- and post-training. ResultsAfter two sessions of training, the ABM group showed a significant decrease in attentional bias for negative information and self-reported social phobia, while the control group did not. There were no effects of training on depressive mood or self-esteem. LimitationsNo correlation between attentional bias and social phobia was found, which raises questions about the validity of the attentional bias assessment task. Also, the small sample size precludes strong conclusions. ConclusionsVisual search ABM might be beneficial in changing attentional bias and social phobia in adolescents, but further research with larger sample sizes and longer follow-up is needed.

A diffusion model account of the relationship between the emotional flanker task and rumination and depression.

Although there exists a consensus that depression is characterized by preferential processing of negative information, empirical findings to support the association between depression and rumination on the one hand and selective attention for negative stimuli on the other hand have been elusive. We argue that one of the reasons for the inconsistent findings may be the use of aggregate measures of response times and accuracies to measure attentional bias. Diffusion model analysis allows to partial out the information processing component from other components that comprise the decision-making process. In this study, we applied a diffusion model to an emotional flanker task. Results revealed that when focusing on a negative target, both rumination and depression were associated with facilitated processing due to negative distracters, whereas only rumination was associated with less interference by positive distracters. After controlling for depression scores, rumination still predicted attentional bias for negative information, but depression scores were no longer predictive after controlling for rumination. Consistent with elusive findings in the literature, we did not find this pattern of results when using accuracy scores or mean response times. Our results suggest that rumination accounts for the attentional bias for negative information found in depression.

2279 – Post traumatic stress symptoms and anxiety as attentional bias modulators in “control” population

Introduction Information processing studies, such as attentional bias, help to distinguish anxious pathologies. If Vigilance and disengagement bias have been widely demonstrated in generalized anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their existence has not been reported in non clinical sample with or without anxiety and/or PTSD symptoms. Objectives and aims The aim of the present study was to examine the possible presence of specific attentional bias in these populations and compare them with classical bias in PTSD patients. Methods One hundred and thirty-one students completed a visual search task with a lexical decision component, and anxiety and PTSD scales. We controlled attentional bias: vigilance / disengagement and words valence: neutral / general threat-related / trauma-related. Ten PTSD patients were assessed for PTSD with CAPS and completed the same protocol. Results Among non clinical sample, four groups were distinguished: without symptom, anxious, PTSS (Post-Traumatic Stress Symptom) and, anxious and PTSS groups. Analysis of response time and error rate show different pattern of bias in each non clinical group. Considering the PTSS group response times were higher for trauma-related words, while for threat-related words, the anxious group was characterized by lower response times. Without symptom participants showed an attentional bias for negative information. Anxious and PTSS participants were characterized by a generalization of both biases. Conclusions These data reveal the existence of different types of information processing between these four non clinical groups. A putative role of anxious symptoms, in anxiety pathologies such as PTSD, on attentional bias is discussed.

Relationships among 5-HTT genotype, life events and gender in the recognition of facial emotions

Accumulating evidence has shown that a polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin-transporter (5-HTTLPR) modulates neural activation during the perceptual processing of emotional facial expressions. Furthermore, behavioral research has shown that attentional bias for negative information is increased in s allele carriers. We examined the interactions among 5-HTTLPR (including SNP rs25531), life events and gender on the detection of facial emotions. We found a main effect of genotype, as well as moderating effects of childhood emotional abuse (CEA) and recent life events (RLE). S homozygous participants recognized negative facial expressions at a lower intensity than the other genotype groups. This effect was more evident in female participants and in participants who had experienced life events. The 5-HTTLPR genotype affects facial emotional perception, a process which is linked to a neurobiological response to threat and vulnerability to emotional disorders.

Rumination and attention in major depression

Up until recently, it had been assumed that attentional biases for negative information do not exist in depression. However studies using post-conscious exposure durations have produced contradictory results. The limitations of common attentional tasks, suitability of stimulus materials and differences in stimulus duration times may have contributed to these inconsistencies. We aimed to address many of these issues and examine attentional responses in major depression at two post-conscious exposure times. We also investigated possible roles for rumination and distraction in increasing and lessening attentional biases for negative information. We used a fully controlled experimental design to test the effects of both induced and trait rumination and distraction on attention in patients with major depression and healthy controls. Attention was assessed using the dot-probe task. The findings revealed an attentional bias for negative information in depressed patients only at the longer post-conscious exposure duration. Furthermore although this bias was not influenced by either induced or trait distraction, it was related to trait rumination. Overall, the results showed that depression is associated with a strategic attentional bias towards negative information and that this bias is stronger in individuals who habitually ruminate.

Attentional biases for negative information in induced and naturally occurring dysphoria

Two studies investigated the relationship between attentional biases for negative information and dysphoria—both induced (Study 1) and naturally occurring (Study 2). In a modified dot probe task a series of word pairs was presented, and Ss responded to probes that replaced one of the words in each pair. The stimuli included depression-related, anxiety-related and neutral words. To examine the time course of the attentional biases, there were three exposure durations of the word pairs: 14 ms (+ 186 ms mask); 500 ms and 1000 ms. In Study 1, the depressed mood induction procedure was associated with greater vigilance for depression-related words at 500 ms, with a similar trend at 1000 ms. In Study 2, measures of depressed mood and vulnerability correlated positively with vigilance for negative words in the 1000 ms condition. There was no evidence from either study that depressed mood was associated with a pre-conscious bias for negative words (i.e. in the 14 ms masked exposure condition). However, this pre-conscious bias was associated with high trait anxiety in Study 2, consistent with previous research. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical and empirical work on cognitive biases in clinical and non-clinical anxiety and depression.