Anxiety and attention: is there an attentional bias for positive emotional stimuli?

I Can See It in Your Face. Affective Valuation of Exercise in More or Less Physically Active Individuals

The purpose of this study was to illustrate that people's affective valuation of exercise can be identified in their faces. The study was conducted with a software for automatic facial expression analysis and it involved testing the hypothesis that positive or negative affective valuation occurs spontaneously when people are reminded of exercise. We created a task similar to an emotional Stroop task, in which participants responded to exercise-related and control stimuli with a positive or negative facial expression (smile or frown) depending on whether the photo was presented upright or tilted. We further asked participants how much time they would normally spend for physical exercise, because we assumed that the affective valuation of those who exercise more would be more positive. Based on the data of 86 participants, regression analysis revealed that those who reported less exercise and a more negative reflective evaluation of exercise initiated negative facial expressions on exercise-related stimuli significantly faster than those who reported exercising more often. No significant effect was observed for smile responses. We suspect that responding with a smile to exercise-related stimuli was the congruent response for the majority of our participants, so that for them no Stroop interference occurred in the exercise-related condition. This study suggests that immediate negative affective reactions to exercise-related stimuli result from a postconscious automatic process and can be detected in the study participants' faces. It furthermore illustrates how methodological paradigms from social-cognition research (here: the emotional Stroop paradigm) can be adapted to collect and analyze biometric data for the investigation of exercisers' and non-exercisers' automatic valuations of exercise.

The Structure of the Chinese Material Value Scale: An Eastern Cultural View

This study investigated the structure of the Chinese Material Value Scale (MVS). A two-factor structure, rather than the original three-factor structure, was proposed for China by means of confirmatory factor analysis. Direct evidence showed that the dimensions of success and happiness could be merged together. Both explicit and implicit methods were used to examine the relationship between success and happiness based on possession. In particular, as an implicit method, the dot-probe paradigm recording participants’ response time supported the idea that the two-factors could be merged together. The results also showed that for Chinese people, success to an extent means happiness, while the converse is not necessarily true. Chinese are much more concerned about social evaluation than their own feelings, and this cultural characteristic is reflected in our findings.

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 18 years 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.

Reward devaluation: Dot-probe meta-analytic evidence of avoidance of positive information in depressed persons

Cognitive theories of depression and anxiety have traditionally emphasized the role of attentional biases in the processing of negative information. The dot-probe task has been widely used to study this phenomenon. Recent findings suggest that biased processing of positive information might also be an important aspect of developing psychopathological symptoms. However, despite some evidence suggesting persons with symptoms of depression and anxiety may avoid positive information, many dot-probe studies have produced null findings. The present review used conventional and novel meta-analytic methods to evaluate dot-probe attentional biases away from positive information and, for comparison, toward negative information, in depressed and anxious individuals. Results indicated that avoidance of positive information is a real effect exhibiting substantial evidential value among persons experiencing psychopathology, with individuals evidencing primary symptoms of depression clearly demonstrating this effect. Different theoretical explanations for these findings are evaluated, including those positing threat-processing structures, even-handedness, self-regulation, and reward devaluation, with the novel theory of reward devaluation emphasized and expanded. These novel findings and theory suggest that avoidance of prospective reward helps to explain the cause and sustainability of depressed states. Suggestions for future research and methodological advances are discussed.

Exploring the relationship between positive and negative emotional avoidance and anxiety symptom severity: the moderating role of attentional control

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Emotional avoidance has been found to be associated with higher levels of anxiety. However, no research to date has differentiated between the avoidance of positive and negative emotions in relation to anxiety. Additionally, no studies have examined the extent to which attentional control moderates the relation between the avoidance of emotions and anxiety. Thus, the purpose of this study was to (a) clarify relations between both positive and negative emotional avoidance and anxiety, and (b) examine attentional control as a moderator of the relations between both positive and negative emotional avoidance and anxiety.

METHODS

A community sample of adults (N = 93) completed a series of questionnaires, as well as a laboratory-based measure of attentional control.

RESULTS

Greater avoidance of both positive and negative emotions was associated with higher levels of anxiety. Additionally, attentional control moderated the relationship between negative (but not positive) emotional avoidance and anxiety. Specifically, the avoidance of negative emotions was associated with higher levels of anxiety for those with lower attentional control.

LIMITATIONS

Limitations include a cross-sectional design, use of self-report measures, and the examination of hypotheses within a non-clinical sample.

CONCLUSION

Findings are consistent with a growing body of research demonstrating the moderating role of attentional control in the relation between risk factors and negative outcomes. Findings also suggest that empirically-based treatment approaches that contain attention-based components may be beneficial for emotionally avoidant individuals with poor attentional control abilities.

Positive emotion regulation in emotional disorders: a theoretical review

Conceptualizations of emotion regulation have led to the identification of cognitive and behavioral regulatory abnormalities that contribute to the development and maintenance of emotional disorders. However, existing research on emotion regulation in anxiety and mood disorders has primarily focused on the regulation of negative emotions rather than positive emotions. Recent findings indicate that disturbances in positive emotion regulation occur across emotional disorders, and may be a generative target for treatment research. The aims of this paper are to: 1. Present a transdiagnostic model of positive emotion disturbances in emotional disorders; 2. Review evidence for disturbances in positive emotion regulation in emotional disorders across categories of emotion regulation; and 3. Propose treatment strategies that may address these disturbances.

The effects of trait and state anxiety on attention to emotional images: an eye-tracking study

Attentional biases for threatening stimuli have been implicated in the development of anxiety disorders. However, little is known about the relative influences of trait and state anxiety on attentional biases. This study examined the effects of trait and state anxiety on attention to emotional images. Low, mid, and high trait anxious participants completed two trial blocks of an eye-tracking task. Participants viewed image pairs consisting of one emotional (threatening or positive) and one neutral image while their eye movements were recorded. Between trial blocks, participants underwent an anxiety induction. Primary analyses examined the effects of trait and state anxiety on the proportion of viewing time on emotional versus neutral images. State anxiety was associated with increased attention to threatening images for participants, regardless of trait anxiety. Furthermore, when in a state of anxiety, relative to a baseline condition, durations of initial gaze and average fixation were longer on threat versus neutral images. These findings were specific to the threatening images; no anxiety-related differences in attention were found with the positive images. The implications of these results for future research, models of anxiety-related information processing, and clinical interventions for anxiety are discussed.

Avaliação da ansiedade e do viés de atenção no canal visual para estímulos emocionais em uma amostra não clínica

A ansiedade vem sendo estudada como fator capaz de influenciar a atenção visual seletiva em experimentos como a Visual Probe Detection Task (VPDT). Este estudo objetivou comparar o viés de atenção para imagens emocionais em pessoas com diferentes níveis de ansiedade de traço e estado usando a VPDT. Oitenta e dois estudantes universitários responderam ao IDATE. Na VPDT, utilizaram-se 12 pares de imagens com alto nível de ativação e valência negativa, pareadas com imagens controles neutras, do International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Os estímulos eram apresentados durante 200 m. O viés de atenção não foi diferente entre os participantes com baixos e altos níveis de ansiedade de traço e estado. Tais resultados indicaram que elas não são importantes para o viés de atenção para estímulos negativos com altos níveis de ativação. Além disso, é possível que o viés de atenção para estímulos ansiogênicos seja observado apenas em populações clínicas.

Specificity of cognitive biases in patients with current depression and remitted depression and in patients with asthma

BACKGROUND

Previous studies have demonstrated a specific cognitive bias for sad stimuli in currently depressed patients; little is known, however, about whether this bias persists after recovery from the depressive episode. Depression is frequently observed in patients with asthma and is associated with a worse course of the disease. Given these high rates of co-morbidity, we could expect to observe a similar bias towards sad stimuli in patients with asthma.

METHOD

We therefore examined cognitive biases in memory and attention in 20 currently and 20 formerly depressed participants, 20 never-depressed patients diagnosed with asthma, and 20 healthy control participants. All participants completed three cognitive tasks: the self-referential encoding and incidental recall task, the emotion face dot-probe task and the emotional Stroop task.

RESULTS

Compared with healthy participants, currently and formerly depressed participants, but not patients with asthma, exhibited specific biases for sad stimuli.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that cognitive biases are evident in depression even after recovery from an acute episode but are not found in never-depressed patients with asthma.

Emotional Stroop task: effect of word arousal and subject anxiety on emotional interference

Inconsistent findings regarding the emotional Stroop effect in healthy subjects may be explained by confounding effects of stimulus valence and arousal, as well as individual differences in anxiety. We examined reaction time data in a healthy sample using the emotional Stroop task while carefully matching arousal level of positive and negative words. Independent of valence, emotional relative to neutral words elicited emotional interference, indicating that arousal determines emotional interference. Independent of valence, emotional words were better re-called and recognized than neutral words. Individual differences in state anxiety were associated with emotional interference, that is, emotional interference was enhanced in subjects with high state anxiety. There was no influence of trait anxiety. These findings indicate that word arousal produces emotional interference independent of valence. State anxiety exacerbates interference of emotional words by further biasing attention towards emotionally salient stimuli.

Responding to suicidal calls: does trait anxiety hinder or help?

To see if trait anxiety and suicidality interfered with the ability to respond to suicidal crisis calls, 279 undergraduates completed measures of trait anxiety and suicidality in the past week, and the revised Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI-2). Unexpectedly, trait anxiety (but not suicidality) correlated with better SIRI-2 scores. In addition, students scored significantly more like the experts on the SIRI-2 if they were European-American, were relatively older, had completed a crisis intervention course, had undergone psychotherapy, or had ever been suicidal in their lives. Trait anxiety does not hinder, and may even help, in responding to a suicidal phone call.

Coherence and specificity of information-processing biases in depression and social phobia

Research has not resolved whether depression is associated with a distinct information-processing bias, whether the content of the information-processing bias in depression is specific to themes of loss and sadness, or whether biases are consistent across the tasks most commonly used to assess attention and memory processing. In the present study, participants diagnosed with major depression, social phobia, or no Axis I disorder, completed several information-processing tasks assessing attention and memory for sad, socially threatening, physically threatening, and positive stimuli. As predicted, depressed participants exhibited specific biases for stimuli connoting sadness; social phobic participants did not evidence such specificity for threat stimuli. It is important to note that the different measures of bias in memory and attention were not systematically intercorrelated. Implications for the study of cognitive bias in depression, and for cognitive theory more broadly, are discussed.