Negative Attentional Bias Research Articles

Distress Intolerance Moderation of Attention to Emotion: An Eye-Tracking Study

Distress intolerance (DI) is an important individual difference reflective of the inability to endure aversive affective states and is relevant to multiple clinical populations, but underlying emotional processing mechanisms remain unclear. The current study used eye-tracking to examine biased attention towards emotional stimuli at baseline and in the context of acute stress in a non-clinical sample (N = 165). We hypothesized that DI would incrementally predict greater stressor-elicited increases in sustained/delayed disengagement, but not initial orientation/facilitated engagement negative (i.e., threat, dysphoric) attention biases, and that DI’s association with maladaptive stress regulation would depend on these increases. Partially consistent with predictions, DI was only independently associated with stressor-elicited increases in sustained negative bias and, unexpectedly, decreases in sustained positive bias. Further, DI and change in sustained threat bias marginally interacted to predict cardiovascular but not subjective anxious mood recovery. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Cognition in depression: Can we THINC-it better?

BackgroundCognitive compromise is a common experience for patients with depression and other mood disorders. Depressed patients sustain deficits in working memory and attentional distortions in emotional processing and negative attention biases, which may contribute to maintaining their depressive state. MethodsThe Mood Assessment and Classification (MAC) Committee comprised academic psychiatrists with clinical expertise in the management of mood disorders. The independently convened committee met to discuss contentious aspects of mood disorders diagnosis and assessment with the express aim of informing clinical practice and future research. ResultsThe Committee specifically identified cognition as an important aspect for clinicians to consider in the context of depression and mood disorders. This article highlights some of the barriers to assessment and proposes tools that have the potential to be implemented in clinical practice. LimitationsThe conclusions drawn within this article are based on expert opinion. We have noted the limitations of the literature that informs this opinion. ConclusionsAs cognitive ability has been closely linked to patients’ ability to achieve functional recovery, it is imperative that clinicians are able to identify patients with cognitive deficits and are equipped with tools to conduct effective cognitive assessments. Examining cognitive factors may generate a deeper understanding of the pathogenesis of depression and mood disorders which can ultimately be used to inform treatment.

Attentional bias scores in patients with depression and effects of age: a controlled, eye-tracking study.

ObjectiveTo compare the attentional bias of depressed patients and non-depressed control subjects and examine the effects of age using eye-tracking technology in a free-viewing set of tasks.MethodsPatients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and non-depressed control subjects completed an eye-tracking task to assess attention of processing negative, positive and neutral facial expressions. In this cross-sectional study, the tasks were separated in two types (neutral versus happy faces and neutral versus sad faces) and assessed in two age groups (‘young’ [18–30 years] and ‘middle-aged’ [31–55 years]).ResultsCompared with non-depressed control subjects (n = 75), patients with MDD (n = 90) had a significant reduced positive attentional bias and enhanced negative attentional bias irrespective of age. The positive attentional bias in ‘middle-aged’ patients with MDD was significantly lower than in ‘young’ patients, although there was no difference between the two age groups in negative attentional bias.ConclusionsThese results confirm that there are emotional attentional biases in patients with MDD and that positive attentional biases are influenced by age.

Inflammation and attentional bias in breast cancer survivors

Evidence suggests an association between inflammation and depression, although findings are mixed. Focusing on core processes in depression may clarify associated biological underpinnings. Negative cognitive bias is a key component of depression, but has not been examined in relation to inflammation. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that elevated inflammatory markers would be associated with negative attentional bias in a sample of 91 breast cancer survivors. Participants were drawn from a larger study and provided blood samples for assessment of peripheral markers of inflammation and completed questionnaires and neuropsychological testing. Attentional bias towards emotional stimuli was assessed with a dot-probe computer task using emotional (sad, happy, angry) and neutral faces. Circulating concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP) were positively correlated with negative attentional bias (p=.03), such that women with higher CRP allocated greater attention towards sad faces. This association held when controlling for attention function and current depressive symptoms. While cross-sectional, results are consistent with research showing that inflammation heightens the salience of negative emotional stimuli, and identify a novel pathway through which inflammation may lead to depression.

Maintenance of Social Anxiety in Stuttering: A Cognitive-Behavioral Model.

Stuttering is a speech disorder frequently accompanied by anxiety in social-evaluative situations. A growing body of research has confirmed a significant rate of social anxiety disorder among adults who stutter. Social anxiety disorder is a chronic and disabling anxiety disorder associated with substantial life impairment. Several influential models have described cognitive-behavioral factors that contribute to the maintenance of social anxiety in nonstuttering populations. The purpose of the present article is to apply these leading models to the experience of social anxiety for people who stutter. Components from existing models were applied to stuttering in order to determine cognitive-behavioral processes that occur before, during, and after social-evaluative situations, which may increase the likelihood of stuttering-related social fears persisting. Maintenance of social anxiety in stuttering may be influenced by a host of interrelated factors, including fear of negative evaluation, negative social-evaluative cognitions, attentional biases, self-focused attention, safety behaviors, and anticipatory and postevent processing. Given the chronic nature of social anxiety disorder, identifying factors that contribute to the persistence of stuttering-related social fears has the potential to inform clinical practice and the development of psychological treatment programs to address the speech and psychological needs of people who stutter with social anxiety.

Emotional face processing in adolescents with childhood sexual abuse-related posttraumatic stress disorder, internalizing disorders and healthy controls

Childhood Sexual Abuse related posttraumatic stress disorder (CSA-related PTSD), and anxiety and depressive disorders (clinical depression) have profound though differential impact on adolescent emotion regulation, attention bias and emotional face processing. We hypothesized increased negative attention bias for emotional faces and altered brain functioning in CSA-related PTSD compared to internalizing disorders and healthy controls in a cross-sectional fMRI study using an emotional face processing task in 19 12-20-year-old adolescents with CSA-related PTSD, 26 with internalizing disorders and 26 healthy controls.Outcome measures were reaction times, subjective ratings of emotional faces, and brain activation patterns for whole brain and for regions of interest. Compared to both other groups adolescents with CSA-related PTSD showed significantly slower reaction times and the highest subjective rating of emotional faces. On whole brain and ROI level, no significant group differences were found. Self-reported depressive, posttraumatic or dissociative symptoms were not associated with differences in task-related brain activity. Results support the hypothesis of increased negative attention bias for fearful and neutral faces in CSA-related PTSD versus both other groups. The absence of neural differences might indicate a brain-behavior neuro-imaging gap to be closed by larger and IQ matched samples or more sensitive paradigms to elicit emotion processing.

Impaired memory updating associated with impaired recall of negative words in dysphoric rumination—Evidence for a removal deficit

We present evidence that dysphoric rumination involves a working memory (WM) updating deficit. Sixty-one undergraduates—pre-screened with rumination and depression scales—completed a novel task providing a specific measure of WM updating. This task involved the substitution of emotionally-valenced words, and provided an online measure of the time taken to remove outdated items from WM. Results showed that dysphoric ruminators spent less time removing outdated words from WM when the new to-be-remembered word was negative. This effect was (1) associated with impaired subsequent recall of negative words, arguably caused by interference from the insufficiently removed outdated words; and (2) correlated with participants’ rumination scores. This is the first study to use the novel removal task to investigate the nature of WM-updating impairments in rumination. The findings are consistent with a negative attentional bias in rumination, and provide preliminary evidence that rumination is associated with a valence-generic removal deficit during WM updating. Reducing the attentional bias could thus be an intervention target in the treatment of dysphoric rumination.

Online visual search attentional bias modification for adolescents with heightened anxiety and depressive symptoms: A randomized controlled trial

Anxiety and depression, which are highly prevalent in adolescence, are both characterized by a negative attentional bias. As Attentional Bias Modification (ABM) can reduce such a bias, and might also affect emotional reactivity, it could be a promising early intervention. However, a growing number of studies also report comparable improvements in both active and placebo groups. The current study investigated the effects of eight online sessions of visual search (VS) ABM compared to both a VS placebo-training and a no-training control group in adolescents with heightened symptoms of anxiety and/or depression (n = 108). Attention bias, interpretation bias, and stress-reactivity were assessed pre- and post-training. Primary outcomes of anxiety and depressive symptoms, and secondary measures of emotional resilience were assessed pre- and post-training and at three and six months follow-up. Results revealed that VS training reduced attentional bias compared to both control groups, with stronger effects for participants who completed more training sessions. Irrespective of training condition, an overall reduction in symptoms of anxiety and depression and an increase in emotional resilience were observed up to six months later. The training was evaluated relatively negatively. Results suggest that online ABM as employed in the current study has no added value as an early intervention in adolescents with heightened symptoms.

Partial Sleep Deprivation Attenuates the Positive Affective System: Effects Across Multiple Measurement Modalities.

Ample behavioral and neurobiological evidence links sleep and affective functioning. Recent self-report evidence suggests that the affective problems associated with sleep loss may be stronger for positive versus negative affective state and that those effects may be mediated by changes in electroencepholographically measured slow wave sleep (SWS). In the present study, we extend those preliminary findings using multiple measures of affective functioning. In a within-subject randomized crossover experiment, we tested the effects of one night of sleep continuity disruption via forced awakenings (FA) compared to one night of uninterrupted sleep (US) on three measures of positive and negative affective functioning: self-reported affective state, affective pain modulation, and affect-biased attention. The study was set in an inpatient clinical research suite. Healthy, good sleeping adults (N = 45) were included. Results indicated that a single night of sleep continuity disruption attenuated positive affective state via FA-induced reductions in SWS. Additionally, sleep continuity disruption attenuated the inhibition of pain by positive affect as well as attention bias to positive affective stimuli. Negative affective state, negative affective pain facilitation, nor negative attention bias were altered by sleep continuity disruption. The present findings, observed across multiple measures of affective function, suggest that sleep continuity disruption has a stronger influence on the positive affective system relative to the negative affective affective system.

Attention bias in older women with remitted depression is associated with enhanced amygdala activity and functional connectivity

BackgroundCognitive bias is a common characteristic of major depressive disorder (MDD) and is posited to remain during remission and contribute to recurrence risk. Attention bias may be related to enhanced amygdala activity or altered amygdala functional connectivity in depression. The current study examined attention bias, brain activity for emotional images, and functional connectivity in post-menopausal women with and without a history of major depression. MethodsAttention bias for emotionally valenced images was examined in 33 postmenopausal women with (n=12) and without (n=21) a history of major depression using an emotion dot probe task during fMRI. Group differences in amygdala activity and functional connectivity were assessed using fMRI and examined for correlations to attention performance. ResultsWomen with a history of MDD showed greater attentional bias for negative images and greater activity in brain areas including the amygdala for both positive and negative images (pcorr <0.001) than women without a history of MDD. In all participants, amygdala activity for negative images was correlated with attention facilitation for emotional images. Women with a history of MDD had significantly greater functional connectivity between the amygdala and hippocampal complex. In all participants amygdala–hippocampal connectivity was positively correlated with attention facilitation for negative images. LimitationsSmall sample with unbalanced groups. ConclusionsThese findings provide evidence for negative attentional bias in euthymic, remitted depressed individuals. Activity and functional connectivity in limbic and attention networks may provide a neurobiological basis for continued cognitive bias in remitted depression.

Moderators of age effects on attention bias toward threat and its association with anxiety

ObjectiveThe current study used a research domain criteria (RDoC) approach to assess age differences in multiple indicators of attention bias and its ties to anxiety, examining stimulus domain and cognitive control as moderators of older adults’ oft-cited positivity effect (bias towards positive and away from negative stimuli, when compared to younger adults). Method38 Younger adults and 38 older adults were administered a battery of cognitive control and trait and state anxiety measures, and completed a dot-probe task to assess attention bias, during which reaction time and fixation duration (using eye-tracking) were recorded for negative and neutral social (a salient threat domain for younger adults) and physical (a salient threat domain for older adults) stimuli. ResultsMixed-effects models demonstrated that older adults were faster to react to dot-probe trials when the probe appeared in the place of negative (vs. neutral) physical stimuli, but displayed no difference in reaction time for social stimuli. Also, older (vs. younger) adults with lower levels of cognitive control were less negatively biased in their visual fixation to social stimuli. A negative reaction time attention bias on the dot-probe task predicted greater trait anxiety among participants with low levels of cognitive control, with a more complex pattern predicting state anxiety. ConclusionOlder adults do attend to social and physical stimuli differently. When stimuli concern a social threat, older adults do not preferentially attend to either neutral or negative stimuli. However, when stimuli concern physical threat, older adults preferentially attend to negative stimuli. Threat biases are associated with anxiety at all ages for those with low cognitive control.

2.34 LONGITUDINAL CHANGES IN DEPRESSION PREDICT CHANGES IN MEDIAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX RESPONSE TO SAD FACES IN LATE ADOLESCENT GIRLS

Increased activation of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been associated with a heightened negative self-focus and a negative attentional bias in individuals with depression. Cognitive-based interventions in adults with depression have shown that with reduced depression severity, mPFC activity toward negative affective stimuli decreases. In this study, we were interested in whether changes in depression symptom severity from ages 16 to 17 years would predict concurrent changes in mPFC activity during self-referential processing of sad faces.

Attention training through gaze-contingent feedback: Effects on reappraisal and negative emotions.

Reappraisal is central to emotion regulation but its mechanisms are unclear. This study tested the theoretical prediction that emotional attention bias is linked to reappraisal of negative emotion-eliciting stimuli and subsequent emotional responding using a novel attentional control training. Thirty-six undergraduates were randomly assigned to either the control or the attention training condition and were provided with different task instructions while they performed an interpretation task. Whereas control participants freely created interpretations, participants in the training condition were instructed to allocate attention toward positive words to efficiently create positive interpretations (i.e., recruiting attentional control) while they were provided with gaze-contingent feedback on their viewing behavior. Transfer to attention bias and reappraisal success was evaluated using a dot-probe task and an emotion regulation task which were administered before and after the training. The training condition was effective at increasing attentional control and resulted in beneficial effects on the transfer tasks. Analyses supported a serial indirect effect with larger attentional control acquisition in the training condition leading to negative attention bias reduction, in turn predicting greater reappraisal success which reduced negative emotions. Our results indicate that attentional mechanisms influence the use of reappraisal strategies and its impact on negative emotions. The novel attention training highlights the importance of tailored feedback to train attentional control. The findings provide an important step toward personalized delivery of attention training. (PsycINFO Database Record

Alleviated negative rather than positive attentional bias in patients with depression in remission: an eye-tracking study.

ObjectiveTo investigate attentional bias toward happy and sad faces in remitted depressed (RD) patients compared with healthy control (HC) subjects.MethodsThis cross-sectional study enrolled RD patients and sex- and age-matched HC subjects. Eye movement data were acquired for all study participants while free viewing a 2 × 2 matrix of emotional faces. The attentional bias toward different emotional faces and whether the attention maintenance components generated attentional bias in the RD patients were analysed by comparing the attentional modes of the RD group with the HC group.ResultsA total of 27 RD patients and 27 HC subjects were analysed in this study. The RD and HC groups exhibited no significant differences toward first fixation location and initial attentional maintenance. In later attentional maintenance, the RD group showed significantly less attentional bias toward happy faces, but there were no significant differences in their attentional bias toward sad faces, compared with the HC group.ConclusionsThis present study showed that the negative attentional bias of RD patients was successfully eased, but their positive attentional bias was still insufficient.

The interaction effect of attentional bias and attentional control on dispositional anxiety among adolescents.

Research has shown that children and adolescents with attentional control deficits tend to have high anxiety and exhibit threat-related selective attentional bias. This study aimed to investigate how positive and negative attentional biases would interact with attentional control on dispositional anxiety. One hundred and twenty participants aged 18years of age or younger participated in a visual dot-probe task to measure their attentional bias and completed psychological questionnaires to measure their trait anxiety, and attentional control. Mean reaction times to the probe in milliseconds were used to measure attentional bias. Overall, our participants showed a bigger tendency towards attending to positive emotional stimuli than to negative emotional stimuli. Adolescents with high dispositional anxiety showed poorer attentional control. Regression analyses showed that attentional control interact with negative attentional bias to affect anxiety. For participants with high attentional control, higher negative attentional bias was associated with lower trait anxiety. Trait anxiety was not related to negative attentional bias for participants with low attentional control. Positive attentional bias showed no significant relationship with dispositional anxiety, either alone or in interaction with attentional control. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Examining a Novel Gamified Approach to Attentional Retraining: Effects of Single and Multiple Session Training

Negative attention biases (AB) may play a causal role in the development of emotional disorders. In order to examine this proposed causal role, researchers have developed Attention Bias Modification (ABM) paradigms to experimentally induce or reduce AB. To date, most ABM studies have been based on modified dot-probe tasks. However, this task is only moderately successful in changing patterns of AB. In two laboratory-based experiments, we explored the effects of a novel visual search ABM paradigm, called “Intrinsically-Motivating Playable Attentional Control Training”, on AB processes and mood in undergraduate participants. Motivation was fostered by active task involvement (i.e., searching for target faces while ignoring irrelevant faces) and gamification techniques. In both experiments, training performance significantly improved, but failed to transfer to attention and mood measures. Possible explanations for the failure to find transfer effects are discussed.

El debate emoción y cognición en neurociencias. Avances en la comprensión de los dominios sintomáticos de la depresión unipolar

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by dysregulated biological, cognitive and behavioural responses during emotional processing. Cognitive theories of vulnerability to MDD postulate that individuals at high risk are characterized by negative cognitive biases, including negative self-assessments and attentional bias toward positive stimuli. More than 3 decades of research on cognitive factors in depression have provided impressive support for cognitive formulations of depression. Early studies mainly showed that depressed and non-depressed people differ in the content of their thoughts and in how they manage them. Recent research, however, has begun to explore the nature of cognitive deficits and biases in the information processing that characterize depression. While initial studies used a variety of self-report measures, studies on cognitive biases are used in a wide variety of experimental tasks. These studies have provided general support for the view that depression is characterized by automatic negative thoughts and biases in attention, interpretation and memory.

The influence of personality and coping style on the affective outcomes of nostalgia: Is nostalgia a healthy coping mechanism or rumination?

Nostalgia is often described as a ‘bittersweet’ emotional experience. Scholars have argued persuasively as to its function as a means of coping with loneliness, meaninglessness and a negative mood, and its relationship with adaptive strategies for coping with adverse events or affective states. However, depression is strongly associated with rumination and a negative attentional bias. Previous research has not investigated the possibility that people with impaired capacities to effectively regulate moods, such as people with strong tendencies to rumination, may not obtain the same benefits from nostalgic remembering as more healthy people. This paper reports the results of two studies: a preliminary survey involving 213 participants and a second study in which 664 participants self-selected a piece of music that made them feel nostalgic. Results suggest that for people with tendencies to depression or maladaptive coping styles, nostalgic remembering may result in negative affective outcomes. It is argued that nostalgia can represent part of both adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies, depending on the personality and coping style of the individual.

Transcranial Laser Stimulation as Neuroenhancement for Attention Bias Modification in Adults with Elevated Depression Symptoms.

Low-level light therapy (LLLT) with transcranial laser is a non-invasive form of neuroenhancement shown to regulate neuronal metabolism and cognition. Attention bias modification (ABM) is a cognitive intervention designed to improve depression by decreasing negative attentional bias, but to date its efficacy has been inconclusive. Adjunctive neuroenhancement to augment clinical effectiveness has shown promise, particularly for individuals who respond positively to the primary intervention. This randomized, sham-controlled proof-of-principle study is the first to test the hypothesis that augmentative LLLT will improve the effects of ABM among adults with elevated symptoms of depression. Fifty-one adult participants with elevated symptoms of depression received ABM before and after laser stimulation and were randomized to one of three conditions: right forehead, left forehead, or sham. Participants repeated LLLT two days later and were assessed for depression symptoms one and two weeks later. A significant three-way interaction between LLLT condition, ABM response, and time indicated that right LLLT led to greater symptom improvement among participants whose attention was responsive to ABM (i.e., attention was directed away from negative stimuli). Minimal change in depression was observed in the left and sham LLLT. The beneficial effects of ABM on depression symptoms may be enhanced when paired with adjunctive interventions such as right prefrontal LLLT; however, cognitive response to ABM likely moderates the impact of neuroenhancement. The results suggest that larger clinical trials examining the efficacy of using photoneuromodulation to augment cognitive training are warranted.

Self-referential schemas and attentional bias predict severity and naturalistic course of depression symptoms

ABSTRACTAttentional bias and self-referential schemas have been observed in numerous cross-sectional studies of depressed adults and are theorised to maintain negative mood. However, few longitudinal studies have examined whether maladaptive cognition predicts the course of depressive symptoms. Fifty-seven adults with elevated depression symptoms were assessed for negative attentional bias using a dot-probe task with eye-tracking and self-referential schemas using a self-referent encoding task. Participants subsequently completed five weekly depression symptom assessments. Participants with more negative self-referential schemas had higher baseline depression symptoms (r = .55). However, participants who spent more time attending to negative words showed greater symptom worsening over time (r = .42). The findings for negative self-referential schemas replicate past research, while the findings for negative attention bias represent the first evidence showing that attentional biases predict naturalistic symptom course. This work suggests that negative attention biases maintain depression symptoms and represent an important treatment target for neurocognitive therapeutics.