Emotional Attentional Control Research Articles

Childhood maltreatment history and attention bias variability in healthy adult women: role of inflammation and the BDNF Val66Met genotype

Childhood maltreatment has been associated with greater attention bias to emotional information, but the findings are controversial. Recently, a novel index of attention bias, i.e., attention bias variability (ABV), has been developed to better capture trauma-related attentional dysfunction. However, ABV in relation to childhood trauma has not been studied. Here, we examined the association of childhood maltreatment history with attention bias/ABV in 128 healthy adult women. Different types of childhood maltreatment were assessed with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Attention bias/ABV was measured by the dot-probe task. Possible mechanisms whereby childhood maltreatment affects attention bias/ABV were also explored, focusing on blood proinflammatory markers and the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism. We observed a significant positive correlation between childhood emotional abuse and ABV (P = 0.002). Serum high-sensitivity tumor necrosis factor-α levels were significantly positively correlated with ABV (P < 0.001), but not with childhood maltreatment. Jonckheere–Terpstra trend test showed a significant tendency toward greater ABV with increasing numbers of the BDNF Met alleles (P = 0.021). A two-way analysis of variance further revealed that the genotype-by-emotional abuse interaction for ABV was significant (P = 0.022); individuals with the Val/Met and Met/Met genotypes exhibited even greater ABV when childhood emotional abuse was present. These results indicate that childhood emotional abuse can have a long-term negative impact on emotional attention control. Increased inflammation may be involved in the mechanism of ABV, possibly independently of childhood maltreatment. The BDNF Met allele may dose-dependently increase ABV by interacting with childhood emotional abuse.

The Role of Attentional Control in Attention to Emotional Stimuli Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults

Prior studies have examined age differences in attention to emotional stimuli; in the current study, we considered how this might relate to dispositional measures of attentional control across age groups. Participants were 116 middle-aged (aged 35 – 64 years) and 39 older (aged 65-86 years) adults in the United States. In the study, participants filled in the Emotional Attentional Control Scale. Then participants watched fearful, happy, neutral, and disgusting videos. The gaze time for each video was measured by an eye tracker. Results did not show significant age difference in attention to happy and neutral videos. However, middle-aged adults gazed relatively more to the disgusting video and relatively less to the fearful video, t (115) =2.16, p =.03. The opposite pattern was found among older adults, t (38) =5.85, p<.001. Self-reported emotional attentional control was not significantly related to attention in either age group. These findings suggest that different stimuli may yield age differences in fixation that are a less consistent pattern with the age-related positivity effect reported in previous studies, and also that self-reported emotional attentional control may not relate to gaze patterns.

Wanting to Be Happy but Not Knowing How: Poor Attentional Control and Emotion-Regulation Abilities Mediate the Association Between Valuing Happiness and Depression

Recent studies suggest that valuing happiness is associated with negative psychological health outcomes, including increased depression, in US samples. We aimed to replicate these associations in two studies at a UK university (Nstudy one = 151, and Nstudy two = 299). Importantly, we also investigated the role of emotional attentional control and habitual emotion regulation in the relationship between valuing happiness and depression. In both studies, we found that valuing happiness was related to increased depression, confirming the link between valuing happiness and depression in a Western country outside of the USA. Moreover, our findings indicated that the relationship between valuing happiness and depression was strongest in British, rather than non-British participants or participants of dual nationality. Further, our findings revealed that valuing happiness and depression were indirectly associated via the ability to control attention in emotional situations, perceived ability to savor positive experiences, and the extent to which positive emotions feel intrusive. Specifically, increased valuing happiness was associated with lower emotion attention control and lower savoring of positive experiences, which in turn was related to depressive symptoms. These results show that the impaired ability to respond adaptively to emotional situations and to enjoy positive events may underlie the paradoxical relationship between valuing happiness and low well-being.

Problematic attention processing and fear learning in adolescent anxiety: Testing a combined cognitive and learning processes model

Background and objectivesAnxiety in adolescence is characterised by disturbances in attentional processes and the overgeneralisation of fear, however, little is known about the combined and reciprocal effects of and between these factors on youth anxiety. The present study investigated whether attention (attention allocation and control) and fear generalisation processes together predict more variance on adolescent anxiety symptoms than each factor in isolation, and explored their interrelations. Methods197 adolescents completed a novel conditioning task, which paired balloon cues with mildly aversive or neutral outcomes. A spatial cueing task, and self-report measures of emotional attentional control and anxiety, were also completed. ResultsThreat-avoidant attention allocation biases, impaired attention control, and exaggerated fear generalisation together predicted greater variance in anxiety symptoms (55.3%), than each set of fear and attention processes in isolation. Results also provided evidence of an interplay between these factors. Individual differences in threat-avoidant attention allocation biases predicted variability in the generalisation of fear, whilst the association between heightened anxiety and the overgeneralization of fear was moderated by poor attention control. ConclusionsThis study provides unique evidence of the combined effects of attention and fear generalisation mechanisms in explaining youth anxiety, and interrelations between these factors. Importantly, results suggested that deficiencies in attention control may bring out anxiety-associated impairments in fear generalisation. LimitationsWe relied on self-reported ratings of fear during generalization and also of attention control. Thus demand effects cannot be discounted. Reaction-time measures of attention focus are also indirect assessments of attention that may lack precision.

Feature Specific Attention and Return of Fear after Extinction

Anxiety disorders are often treated by repeatedly presenting stimuli that are perceptually similar to original stimuli to which fear was originally acquired. Fear can return after it is extinguished because of the differences between these stimuli. It may possible to attenuate return of fear by manipulating attention to the commonalities between feared stimuli and extinction stimuli. After acquiring fear for an animal-like stimulus by pairing with an electro-cutaneous shock, fear was extinguished by repeatedly presenting a similar stimulus. During extinction participants were asked questions that instructed them to attend towards the features in common between the acquisition and extinction stimulus or towards the unique features of the extinction stimulus. Return of fear was assessed by presenting a second perceptually similar stimulus after extinction. Participants showed a return in skin conductance responding after extinction in the unique condition, and not in the common condition. Both groups showed a return in self-report ratings of US expectancy. Neither group showed a return in fear potentiated startle, but there was evidence that this may have been due to individual differences in emotional attentional control. Our conclusions are limited by the use of a self-report measure of emotional attentional control and the absence of limits on the length of time participants could take to answer the extinction questions. It may be possible to enhance extinction and prevent a return of the physiological aspects of fear by manipulating attention during extinction. However, this does not appear to influence explicit expectancy of aversive outcomes. Individual differences in attentional control may influence this process.

Emotional attentional control predicts changes in diurnal cortisol secretion following exposure to a prolonged psychosocial stressor

Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis irregularities have been associated with several psychological disorders. Hence, the identification of individual difference variables that predict variations in HPA-axis activity represents an important challenge for psychiatric research. We investigated whether self-reported attentional control in emotionally demanding situations prospectively predicted changes in diurnal salivary cortisol secretion following exposure to a prolonged psychosocial stressor. Low ability to voluntarily control attention has previously been associated with anxiety and depressive symptomatology. Attentional control was assessed using the Emotional Attentional Control Scale. In students who were preparing for academic examination, salivary cortisol was assessed before (time 1) and after (time 2) examination. Results showed that lower levels of self-reported emotional attentional control at time 1 (N=90) predicted higher absolute diurnal cortisol secretion and a slower decline in cortisol throughout the day at time 2 (N=71). Difficulty controlling attention during emotional experiences may lead to chronic HPA-axis hyperactivity after prolonged exposure to stress. These results indicate that screening for individual differences may foster prediction of HPA-axis disturbances, paving the way for targeted disorder prevention.

The eACS: Attentional control in the presence of emotion

We present a questionnaire – The Emotional Attentional Control Scale (eACS) – An adaptation of the original Attentional Control Scale (ACS) that assesses the voluntary control of attention. A low score on the ACS has been associated with high levels of anxiety and depression. As the ACS items are affectively neutral, some people scoring high on the ACS may still show low levels of attentional control (AC) in more emotionally-demanding situations. We propose that the eACS, which focuses on the emotional modulation of AC, may explain additional variance in AC deficits associated with psychopathology.The eACS showed one general factor for emotional AC. Both the ACS and eACS showed a negative correlation with trait anxiety (STAI-T) and depressive symptoms scores (BDI-II). In regression analyses, when accounting for the shared variance between the STAI-T and BDI-II, both the eACS and ACS explained independent variance in STAI-T scores (β=−.23, and β=−.15, p<.001, respectively).The eACS has clear benefit in measuring AC deficits that are associated with psychopathology. Individual differences in AC in emotionally-demanding situations could be an important, and as yet underappreciated, aspect of psychopathology. Recommendations for future research are given.

Top down and emotional attention control in post-traumatic stress disorder

Top down and emotional attention control in post-traumatic stress disorder