Sleep-related attentional bias in insomnia: The mediating role of arousal

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Characterize the nature of attentional biases toward nocturnal and diurnal sleep-related stimuli in individuals with insomnia disorder. We investigated the contributing role of sleep-related attentional biases in insomnia severity and whether their effects on insomnia severity were mediated by arousal and valence levels of the presented stimuli.

METHODS

Sixty-four individuals with insomnia disorder and 70 controls completed two Posner spatial cueing tasks including both nocturnal (alarm clocks) and diurnal (fatigue) pictorial stimuli associated with neutral cues. Arousal and valence of the sleep-related stimuli were assessed using a 5-point Likert type scale.

RESULTS

Attention biases characterized by difficulty disengaging from and increased avoidance for daytime fatigue, and by difficulty disengaging from alarm clocks were observed in individuals with insomnia disorder compared to controls. On the whole sample, difficulty to disengage from diurnal and nocturnal sleep-related stimuli were related mostly to higher arousal rating of sleep-related stimuli and insomnia severity. Higher arousal rating for sleep-related stimuli mediates the relationship between difficulty disengaging and insomnia severity.

LIMITATIONS

The cross-sectional nature of the study.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide first initial evidence for an attentional bias characterized by on one side, avoidance for diurnal sleep-related stimuli and on other side, disengagement for both diurnal and nocturnal sleep-related stimuli in patients with insomnia. Disengagement difficulties for both diurnal and nocturnal sleep-related stimuli indirectly affected insomnia severity through arousal elicited by these stimuli. It appears important to develop and apply attentional bias modification training therapeutic interventions that can effectively reduce sleep-related arousal and attentional biases.

Modifying biased attention towards food stimuli in binge eating disorder: A multi-session training study

Individuals with binge eating disorder (BED) exhibit a biased attention towards food stimuli. Against this backdrop, the present study with pre-registered design (ID: DRKS00012984) tested whether (a) a training designed to reduce attentional food processing indeed modifies this bias, (b) this reduction is evident in several measures of food-related attention and (c) this is associated with reductions in craving, binge frequency over the past 28 days and calories eaten in a laboratory based bogus taste test. Individuals with BED were randomly allocated to four sessions of either an attentional bias modification training (ABMT; n = 39) or a comparable no-modification control training (CT; n = 27). In all measures assessed via eye-tracking - dwell time bias, dwell time bias variability and first fixation bias - food-related bias decreased in the ABMT relative to the CT. Against our hypothesis, no differential between-group effects were found for reaction time (RT) bias and its variability as well as for calories consumed in a bogus taste test. By contrast, reductions in binge frequency and subjective craving were found for both groups. Taken together, the tendency to preferentially process food seems a modifiable phenomenon in individuals with BED. However, modifying this selective viewing pattern does not seem a prerequisite for a successful reduction of binge frequency.

Dissociation of drug and negative emotional cue induced attentional bias in individuals with methamphetamine-use disorder

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Although both drugs and negative emotions can trigger drug craving or relapse in individuals with methamphetamine-use disorder (MUD), it remains unclear whether individuals with MUD have attentional biases toward both drug and negative emotional cues and whether this bias involves attention orientation or difficulty in attention disengagement. This study aimed to measure different components of attentional bias toward drug-related and negative emotional cues in individuals with MUD.

METHODS

Two dot-probe tasks were used to investigate attentional bias toward drug (drug task) and negative emotional cues (emotion task) in individuals with MUD. Forty-three males with MUD (average age of 43.44 ± 11.91 years, average drug-use duration of 11.35 ± 8.39 years) participated in the study voluntarily.

RESULTS

There was a significant interaction between the task type and location (p = .01). Specifically, for drug cues, participants showed significant difficulty in attention disengagement toward drug cues (p = .01); however, no attention orientation (p = .46). For negative emotional cues, neither significant attention orientation (p = .07) nor significant difficulty in attention disengagement (p = .50) was found.

CONCLUSIONS AND SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE

Attentional bias in individuals with MUD was highly selective for drug cues; thus, difficulty in attention disengagement from drug cues can be considered a potential mediating mechanism for attentional bias modification interventions for individuals with MUD. This study served to generate hypotheses or suggest future experiments on interventions for individuals with MUD.

Does culture moderate the encoding and recognition of negative cues? Evidence from an eye-tracking study

Cross-cultural research has elucidated many important differences between people from Western European and East Asian cultural backgrounds regarding how each group encodes and consolidates the contents of complex visual stimuli. While Western European groups typically demonstrate a perceptual bias towards centralised information, East Asian groups favour a perceptual bias towards background information. However, this research has largely focused on the perception of neutral cues and thus questions remain regarding cultural group differences in both the perception and recognition of negative, emotionally significant cues. The present study therefore compared Western European (n = 42) and East Asian (n = 40) participants on a free-viewing task and a subsequent memory task utilising negative and neutral social cues. Attentional deployment to the centralised versus background components of negative and neutral social cues was indexed via eye-tracking, and memory was assessed with a cued-recognition task two days later. While both groups demonstrated an attentional bias towards the centralised components of the neutral cues, only the Western European group demonstrated this bias in the case of the negative cues. There were no significant differences observed between Western European and East Asian groups in terms of memory accuracy, although the Western European group was unexpectedly less sensitive to the centralised components of the negative cues. These findings suggest that culture modulates low-level attentional deployment to negative information, however not higher-level recognition after a temporal interval. This paper is, to our knowledge, the first to concurrently consider the effect of culture on both attentional outcomes and memory for both negative and neutral cues.

Attenuation of spatial bias with target template variation

This study investigated the impact of target template variation or consistency on attentional bias in location probability learning. Participants conducted a visual search task to find a heterogeneous shape among a homogeneous set of distractors. The target and distractor shapes were either fixed throughout the experiment (target-consistent group) or unpredictably varied on each trial (target-variant group). The target was often presented in one possible search region, unbeknownst to the participants. When the target template was consistent throughout the biased visual search, spatial attention was persistently biased toward the frequent target location. However, when the target template was inconsistent and varied during the biased search, the spatial bias was attenuated so that attention was less prioritized to a frequent target location. The results suggest that the alternative use of target templates may interfere with the emergence of a persistent spatial bias. The regularity-based spatial bias depends on the number of attentional shifts to the frequent target location, but also on search-relevant contexts.

Human-algorithm interactions help explain the spread of misinformation

Human attention biases toward moral and emotional information are as prevalent online as they are offline. When these biases interact with content algorithms that curate social media users' news feeds to maximize attentional capture, moral and emotional information are privileged in the online information ecosystem. We review evidence for these human-algorithm interactions and argue that misinformation exploits this process to spread online. This framework suggests that interventions aimed at combating misinformation require a dual-pronged approach that combines person-centered and design-centered interventions to be most effective. We suggest several avenues for research in the psychological study of misinformation sharing under a framework of human-algorithm interaction.

Eye-tracking does not reveal early attention processing of sexual copulatory movement in heterosexual men and women

Men and women respond differently when presented with sexual stimuli. Men's reaction is gender-specific, and women's reaction is gender-nonspecific. This might be a result of differential cognitive processing of sexual cues, namely copulatory movement (CM), which is present in almost every dynamic erotic stimulus. A novelty eye-tracking procedure was developed to assess the saliency of short film clips containing CM or non-CM sexual activities. Results from 29 gynephilic men and 31 androphilic women showed only small and insignificant effects in attention bias and no effects in attentional capture. Our results suggest that CM is not processed differently in men and women and, therefore, is not the reason behind gender-nonspecific sexual responses in women.

Effects of perspective taking on attention bias to body-related information among junior high school students with body image disturbance

Using lexical judgment tasks, the present study explored whether perspective taking affected attention bias to body-related information among junior high school students with body image disturbance. Experiment 1 examined the junior high school students' attention bias to body schema-related words; the results showed the body image disturbance group responded significantly more quickly to negative body schema-related words than positive words, whereas the control group did not show a significant difference between positive and negative words. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to judge whether the positive or negative body schema-related words were suitable to describe themselves, when adopting their own perspective or that of another person. The results showed that reaction times to negative words were significantly shorter than to positive words when adopting a self-perspective. When taking another's perspective, there was no significant difference of reaction time between positive and negative words. This result demonstrated that perspective taking reduced attention bias to negative body schema-related information among junior high school students with body image disturbance. The present research suggests that guiding adolescents to view themselves from different perspectives can help them form a more accurate and objective body image.

Attentional engagement with and disengagement from appearance ideals: Differential associations with body dissatisfaction frequency and duration?

Recent work has served to dissociate two dimensions of trait body dissatisfaction: body dissatisfaction frequency and body dissatisfaction duration. The present study sought to evaluate whether body dissatisfaction frequency and body dissatisfaction duration are each associated with distinct patterns of appearance-related cognitive processing. It was hypothesized that speeded attentional engagement with idealized bodies is associated with higher frequency of body dissatisfaction episodes, while slowed attentional disengagement from such information may instead be associated with higher duration of body dissatisfaction episodes. Participants (238 women, 149 men) completed an attentional task capable of independently assessing attentional engagement with, and attentional disengagement from, idealized bodies. Participants also completed both trait and in vivo (i.e., ecological momentary assessment) measures of body dissatisfaction frequency and duration. Results showed that neither engagement nor disengagement bias index scores predicted variance in either body dissatisfaction frequency measures or body dissatisfaction duration measures. Findings suggest that either biased attentional engagement with, and disengagement from, idealized bodies do not associate with the frequency and duration of body dissatisfaction episodes, or there are other key moderating factors involved in the expression of body dissatisfaction-linked attentional bias.

See no evil: Attentional bias toward threat is diminished in aged monkeys

Prior evidence demonstrates that relative to younger adults, older human adults exhibit attentional biases toward positive and/or away from negative socioaffective stimuli (i.e., the age-related positivity effect). Whether or not the effect is phylogenetically conserved is currently unknown and its biopsychosocial origins are debated. To address this gap, we evaluated how visual processing of socioaffective stimuli differs in aged, compared to middle-aged, rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) using eye tracking in two experimental designs that are directly comparable to those historically used for evaluating attentional biases in humans. Results of our study demonstrate that while younger rhesus possesses robust attentional biases toward threatening pictures of conspecifics' faces, aged animals evidence no such bias. Critically, these biases emerged only when threatening faces were paired with neutral and not ostensibly "positive" faces, suggesting social context modifies the effect. Results of our study suggest that the evolutionarily shared mechanisms drive age-related decline in visual biases toward negative stimuli in aging across primate species. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Instructional learning of threat-related attentional capture is modulated by state anxiety

The present study aimed to determine whether persistent threat-related attentional capture can result from instructional learning, when participants acquire knowledge of the aversive qualities of a stimulus through verbal instruction. Fifty-four nonclinical adults first performed a visual search task in which a green or red circle was presented as a target. They were instructed that one of these two colors might be paired with an electric shock if they responded slowly or inaccurately, whereas the other color was never associated with shock. However, no shocks were actually delivered. In a subsequent test phase, in which participants were explicitly informed that shocks were no longer possible, former-target-color stimuli were presented as distractors in a visual search task for a shape-defined target. In both tasks, although participants were never exposed to the electric shock, we observed a significant correlation between threat-related attentional priority and state anxiety. Our results demonstrate that exposure to a stimulus with the belief that it could be threatening is sufficient to generate a persistent attentional bias toward that stimulus, but this effect is modulated by state anxiety. Attentional biases for fear-relevant stimuli have been implicated in anxiety disorders, and our findings demonstrate that for anxious participants, attentional biases can be entirely the product of erroneous beliefs concerning the linking between stimuli and possible outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Attentional bias towards happy faces in the dot-probe paradigm: it depends on which task is used

Two recent articles [Gronchi et al., 2018. Automatic and controlled attentional orienting in the elderly: A dual-process view of the positivity effect. Acta Psychologica, 185, 229-234; Wirth & Wentura, 2020. It occurs after all: Attentional bias towards happy faces in the dot-probe task. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82(5), 2463-2481] report attentional biases for happy facial expressions in the dot-probe paradigm, albeit in different directions. While Wirth and Wentura report a bias towards happy expressions, Gronchi et al. found a reversed effect. A striking difference between the studies was the task performed by the participants. While in Wirth and Wentura, participants performed a discrimination task, they performed a location task in Gronchi et al. In Experiment 1, we directly compared the two versions of the dot-probe paradigm. With the discrimination task, the bias towards happy faces was replicated. However, the location task yielded a null effect. In Experiment 2, we found a cueing effect with an abrupt onset cue in both tasks. However, for the location task a congruence-sequence effect (a typical characteristic of response-priming processes) occurred. This result suggests that in the location task, attentional processes are confounded with response-priming processes. We recommend to generally use discrimination tasks.

Can the processing of task-irrelevant threatening stimuli be inhibited? - The role of shape and valence in the saliency of threatening objects

Numerous studies have demonstrated that attention is quickly oriented towards threatening stimuli, and that this attentional bias is difficult to inhibit. The root cause(s) of this bias may be attributable to the affective (e.g., valence) or visual features (e.g., shape) of threats. In two experiments (behavioral, eye-tracking), we tested which features play a bigger role in the salience of threats. In both experiments, participants looked for a neutral target (butterfly, lock) among other neutral objects. In half of the trials a threatening (snake, gun) or nonthreatening (but visually similar; worm, hairdryer) task-irrelevant distractor was also present at a near or far distance from the target. Behavioral results indicate that both distractor types interfered with task performance. Rejecting nonthreatening distractors as nontargets was easier when they were presented further from the target but distance had no effect when the distractor was threatening. Eye-tracking results showed that participants fixated less often (and for less time) on threatening compared to nonthreatening distractors. They also viewed targets for less time when a threatening distractor was present (compared to nonthreatening). Results suggest that visual features of threats are easier to suppress than affective features, and the latter may have a stronger role in eliciting attentional biases.

Reliability of individual differences in distractor suppression driven by statistical learning

A series of recent studies has demonstrated that attentional selection is modulated by statistical regularities, even when they concern task-irrelevant stimuli. Irrelevant distractors presented more frequently at one location interfere less with search than distractors presented elsewhere. To account for this finding, it has been proposed that through statistical learning, the frequent distractor location becomes suppressed relative to the other locations. Learned distractor suppression has mainly been studied at the group level, where individual differences are treated as unexplained error variance. Yet these individual differences may provide important mechanistic insights and could be predictive of cognitive and real-life outcomes. In the current study, we ask whether in an additional singleton task, the standard measures of attentional capture and learned suppression are reliable and stable at the level of the individual. In an online study, we assessed both the within- and between-session reliability of individual-level measures of attentional capture and learned suppression. We show that the measures of attentional capture, but not of distractor suppression, are moderately stable within the same session (i.e., split-half reliability). Test-retest reliability over a 2-month period was found to be moderate for attentional capture but weak or absent for suppression. RT-based measures proved to be superior to accuracy measures. While producing very robust findings at the group level, the predictive validity of these RT-based measures is still limited when it comes to individual-level performance. We discuss the implications for future research drawing on inter-individual variation in the attentional biases that result from statistical learning.

Exploring Attentional Bias toward Alcohol Content: Insights from Eye-Movement Activity

INTRODUCTION

Attentional bias (AB) is an implicit selective attention toward processing disorder-significant information while neglecting other environmental cues. Considerable empirical evidence highlights the clinical implication of AB in the onset and maintenance of substance use disorder. An innovative method to explore direct measures of AB relies on the eye-movement activity using technologies like eye-tracking (ET). Despite the growing interest regarding the clinical relevance of AB in the spectrum of alcohol consumption, more research is needed to fully determine the AB patterns and its transfer from experimental to clinical applications. The current study consisted of three consecutive experiments. The first experiment aimed to design an ad-hoc visual attention task (VAT) consisting of alcohol-related and neutral images using a nonclinical sample (n = 15). The objective of the second and third experiments was to analyze whether the effect of type of image (alcohol-related vs. neutral images) on AB toward alcohol content using the VAT developed in the first experiment was different for type of drinker (light vs. heavy drinker in the second experiment [n = 30], and occasional social drinkers versus alcohol use disorder (AUD) patients in the third experiment [n = 48]).

METHODS

Areas of interest (AOIs) within each type of image (neutral and alcohol-related) were designed and raw ET-based data were subsequently extracted through specific software analyses. For experiment 1, attention maps were created and processed for each image. For experiments 2 and 3, data on ET variables were gathered and subsequently analyzed through a two-way ANOVA with the aim of examining the effects of the type of image and drinker on eye-movement activity.

RESULTS

There was a statistically significant interaction effect between type of image and type of drinker (light vs. heavy drinker in experiment 2, F(1, 56) = 13.578, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.195, and occasional social drinker versus AUD patients in the experiment 3, F(1, 92) = 35.806, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.280) for "first fixation" with large effect sizes, but not for "number of fixations" and "dwell time." The simple main effect of type of image on mean "first fixation" score for AUD patients was not statistically significant.

CONCLUSION

The data derived from the experiments indicated the importance of AB in sub-clinical populations: heavy drinkers displayed an implicit preference for alcohol-related images compared to light drinkers. Nevertheless, AB fluctuations in patients with AUD compared to the control group were found. AUD patients displayed an early interest in alcohol images, followed by an avoidance attentional processing of alcohol-related images. The results are discussed in light of recent literature in the field.

Interpretation bias and the transition from acute to chronic pain

ABSTRACT

Most theories of pain emphasize cognitive factors in the development of chronicity, but they have rarely been studied in the context of the transition from acute to chronic pain. The aim of the present study was to assess the role of interpretation bias, pain anxiety, and pain avoidance in acute and chronic pain and the transition from acute to chronic pain. Study 1 recruited a sample of N = 85 adults with chronic pain. Study 2 recruited a sample of N = 254 adults with acute pain and followed them up 3 months later. Both studies assessed interpretation bias with the word association task, as well as measuring pain-related anxiety, pain avoidance, pain severity, and pain interference. In study 2, pain outcomes at 3 months were also assessed. Across both acute and chronic pain samples, interpretation bias was associated with pain interference, but not pain severity. Path analysis mediation models for study 2 showed that interpretation bias was associated with increased pain anxiety, which predicted both pain severity and pain interference 3 months later. Pain anxiety was also associated with pain avoidance, but pain avoidance did not predict pain outcomes. This research provides further insight into the transition from acute to chronic pain, suggesting that interpretation bias in acute pain may play a role in pain-related anxiety that drives pain interference, thus maintaining chronic pain. These findings hold promise for further research into potential large-scale preventative interventions targeting interpretation bias and pain anxiety in acute pain.

Visual images of disgusting creatures facilitated attentional orienting and delayed attentional disengagement

Numerous studies have suggested that threatening stimuli induce a spatial attention bias; however, only a few studies have investigated spatial attention biases for disgusting stimuli. Moreover, past studies generally reported that the spatial attention bias to disgusting images is not robustly in normal individuals. We hypothesized that this was due to the unfamiliar of the images, so we prepared the creature's images that were clearly categorized as disgusting and examined the effects of disgusting images on spatial attention bias. A disgusting or an emotionally neutral image was paired and presented with an (emotionally neutral) filler image. After a temporal interval, a target appeared at either the position where a disgusting or a neutral image was presented (valid condition) or where a filler image was presented (invalid condition). Participants pressed a key corresponding to the target's position as quickly and accurately as possible. We varied the position-response correspondence among three experiments. The results showed that the RTs in the invalid condition was longer for the disgusting images than for the neutral images when the position of a disgusting image was not naturally associated with the left-right hand position. We interpreted the results in that that disgusting images generally slowed down attentional disengagement process but the manual responses were inhibited for the position where a disgusting image appeared when the locations of keys and targets were congruent. The present results suggest that disgusting images affect not only attentional processes but also manual responses related to the selection and initiation of responses.

Cannabidiol does not attenuate acute delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol-induced attentional bias in healthy volunteers: A randomised, double-blind, cross-over study

AIMS

To test how attentional bias and explicit liking are influenced by delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and whether these effects are moderated by cannabidiol (CBD).

DESIGN

Double-blind, randomised, within-subjects cross-over study.

SETTING

NIHR Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility at King's College Hospital, London, United Kingdom.

PARTICIPANTS/CASES

Forty-six infrequent cannabis users (cannabis use <1 per week).

INTERVENTION(S)

Across four sessions, participants inhaled vaporised cannabis containing 10 mg of THC and either 0 mg (0:1 CBD:THC), 10 mg (1:1), 20 mg (2:1) or 30 mg (3:1) of CBD, administered in a randomised order and counter-balanced across participants (a total of 24 order groups).

MEASUREMENTS

Participants completed two tasks: (1) Attentional Bias (AB), comparing reaction times toward visual probes presented behind 28 target stimuli (cannabis/food) compared with probes behind corresponding non-target (neutral) stimuli. Participants responding more quickly to probes behind target than non-target stimuli would indicate greater attentional bias to cannabis/food; (2) Picture Rating (PR), where all AB stimuli were rated on a 7-point pleasantness scale, measuring explicit liking.

FINDINGS

During the AB task, participants were more biased toward cannabis stimuli in the 0:1 condition compared with baseline (mean difference = 12.2, 95% confidence intervals [CIs] = 1.20-23.3, d = 0.41, P = 0.03). No other significant AB or PR differences were found between cannabis and food stimuli between baseline and 0:1 condition (P > 0.05). No significant CBD effect was found on AB or PR task performance at any dose (P > 0.05). There was additionally no cumulative effect of THC exposure on AB or PR outcomes (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

A double-blind, randomised, cross-over study among infrequent cannabis users found that inhaled delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol increased attentional bias toward cannabis in the absence of explicit liking, a marker of liability toward cannabis use disorder. At the concentrations normally found in legal and illegal cannabis, cannabidiol had no influence on this effect.

You eye what you eat: BMI, consumption patterns, and dieting status predict temporal attentional bias to food-associated images

People know that overconsumption of high-fat high-sugar (HFHS) foods have negative consequences for physical and cognitive wellbeing but continue to consume these foods in excess, leading to recent proposals to model obesity as an addiction disorder. The current experiment tested, in a large undergraduate sample (N = 306), the hypothesis that obesity and overconsumption is linked with an oversensitivity to rewards that drives attentional biases towards foods and food-associated cues. Using a modified emotion-induced blindness task with food-related distractors, we examined the extent to which attentional biases to images of HFHS foods were accounted for by BMI, HFHS food intake, self-reported hunger, time since last meal, diet status, food preferences, and attentional control. We also examined whether the same individual differences predicted attentional priority to cues that have a learned association with HFHS foods (i.e., images of food logos). Contrary to our predictions, higher BMI predicted less attentional priority for images of food and food logos. At the same time, increased consumption of HFHS foods predicted increased attentional priority for food images, whereas dieting predicted increased attentional priority for food logo images. Our results suggest that different people may preferentially attend to food versus food logo imagery based on their relationships with food. More broadly, our results support the theoretical perspective that attentional biases to food-associated stimuli can be affected by various competing, state-related factors.

Neural mechanisms of attentional bias to emotional faces in patients with chronic insomnia disorder

OBJECTIVE

This study used event-related potential (ERP) and resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) approaches to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the emotional attention bias in patients with chronic insomnia disorder (CID).

METHODS

Twenty-five patients with CID and thirty-three demographically matched healthy controls (HCs) completed clinical questionnaires and underwent electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. EEG analysis examined the group differences in terms of reaction times, P3 amplitudes, event-related spectral perturbations, and inter-trial phase synchrony. Subsequently, seed-based rs-FC analysis of the amygdala nuclei (including the central-medial amygdala [CMA] and basolateral amygdala [BLA]) was performed. The relationship between P3 amplitude, rs-FC and clinical symptom severity in patients with CID was further investigated by correlation analysis.

RESULTS

CID patients exhibited shorter reaction times than HCs in both standard and deviant stimuli, with the abnormalities becoming more pronounced as attention allocation increased. Compared to HCs, ERP analysis revealed increased P3 amplitude, theta wave power, and inter-trial synchrony in CID patients. The rs-FC analysis showed increased connectivity of the BLA-occipital pole, CMA-precuneus, and CMA-angular gyrus and decreased connectivity of the CMA-thalamus in CID patients. Notably, correlation analysis of the EEG and fMRI measurements showed a significant positive correlation between the P3 amplitude and the rs-FC of the CMA-PCU.

CONCLUSION

This study confirms an emotional attention bias in CID, specifically in the neural mechanisms of attention processing that vary depending on the allocation of attentional resources. Abnormal connectivity in the emotion-cognition networks may constitute the neural basis of the abnormal scalp activation pattern.

An investigation of the mechanisms underlying the link between abstract reasoning and intrusive memories: A trauma analogue study

Potentially traumatic events elicit intrusive memories to which some individuals are more vulnerable than others. Lower abstract reasoning capacity has been related to more intrusive memories. A more perceptual processing style when encoding the event may mediate this link. Another potential mechanism is lower attentional control, resulting in greater attentional bias toward trauma-related content. We examined both of these possibilities using a trauma-analogue paradigm. One hundred and twenty participants completed abstract reasoning tasks. Then, 90 participants watched a negative video, and 30 participants watched a neutral video. The level of perceptual processing (P1) and attentional bias (RT) towards trauma-related stimuli were measured with a pictorial Stroop task while recording EEG. Intrusive memories were recorded for 5 days. Abstract reasoning was not associated with intrusive memories. However, lower abstract reasoning tended to be associated with more perceptual processing (greater P1 amplitude) following the negative video. More perceptual processing also tended to be related to more intrusive memories for younger participants. A more pronounced attentional bias was related to more intrusive memories, but only for women. Unexpectedly, also for women, better verbal reasoning was linked to a more pronounced attentional bias. Results are compared to existing studies and future implications are discussed.

Attentional bias for rejection and sad words in Chinese left-behind children with depression

BACKGROUND

This study aimed to examine attentional bias (AB) for sad and social rejection words in Chinese left-behind children (LBC) with depression.

METHOD

We investigated both stimulus specificity and components of AB in different groups using a cross-sectional design. Data were drawn from a school assessment of depression and anxiety, from which we selected LBC with depression (n = 40), LBC without depression (n = 33), a control group with depression (n = 31), and a control group without depression (n = 37). AB was measured with a dot-probe task covering two stimulus types (sad and rejection).

RESULTS

The analysis of AB scores revealed a significant three-way interaction (LBC × depression × word type), F(1, 137) = 4.00, p = 0.047, η2 = 0.028, with depressed non-LBC exhibiting a significant depression × word type interaction, F(1, 66) = 4.67, p = 0.034, η2 = 0.066, while the depression × word type interaction was not significant in LBC, F(1, 71) = 0.18, p = 0.675, η2 = 0.002. Depressed children living with their parents showed AB towards sad words but not rejection words, while depressed LBC showed greater AB towards both rejection and sad words.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings provide evidence that an AB towards sad information is critically involved in the depressed LBC. Compared with non-LBC depressed individuals, an AB for rejection may be involved as a risk factor in the LBC. It sheds light on the effective intervention programmes for LBC's depression and have important practical significance for reducing depression and improving the mental health of LBC.

Attention bias vs. attention control modification for social anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial

Gaze-Contingent Music Reward Therapy (GC-MRT) is an eye-tracking-based attention bias modification protocol for social anxiety disorder (SAD) with established clinical efficacy. However, it remains unclear if improvement following GC-MRT hinges on modification of threat-related attention or on more general enhancement of attention control. Here, 50 patients with SAD were randomly allocated to GC-MRT using either threat faces or shapes. Results indicate comparable reductions in social anxiety and co-morbid depression symptoms in the two conditions. Patients in the shapes condition showed a significant increase in attention control and a reduction in attention to both the trained shapes and threat faces, whereas patients in the faces condition showed a reduction in attention to threat faces only. These findings suggest that enhancement of attention control, independent of valence-specific attention modification, may facilitate reduction in SAD symptoms. Alternative interpretations and clinical implications of the current findings are discussed.

Webcam-Based Eye-Tracking of Attentional Biases in Alzheimer's Disease: A Proof-Of-Concept Study

OBJECTIVES

To measure home-based older adults' attentional biases (AB) using webcam-based eye-tracking (WBET) and examine internal consistency.

METHODS

Twelve participants with and without cognitive impairment completed online self-report anxiety and depression screens, and a 96-trial dot-probe task with eye-gaze tracking. For each trial, participants fixated on a cross, free-viewed sad-neutral, sad-angry, sad-happy, angry-neutral, angry-happy, and happy-neutral facial expression pairings, and then fixated on a dot. In emotional-neutral pairings, the time spent looking (dwell-time) at neutral was averaged and subtracted from the emotional average to indicate biases "away from" (negative score) and "toward" (positive score) each emotional face. Internal consistency was estimated for dwell-times and bias scores using Cronbach's alpha and Spearman - Brown corrected split-half coefficients.

RESULTS

The full-cohort and a comorbid anxious and depressed sub-group (n = 6) displayed AB away from sad faces, and toward angry and happy faces, with happy-face AB being more pronounced. AB indices demonstrated low reliability except sub-group happy-face indices. Happy-face AB demonstrated the highest reliability.

CONCLUSIONS

AB measures were in-line with lab-based eye-tracking literature, providing some support for WBET-based measurement.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

Establishing the feasibility of WBET-based measures is a step toward an objective home-based clinical tool. Literature-based suggestions are provided to improve reliability.

Craving modulates attentional bias towards alcohol in severe alcohol use disorder: An eye-tracking study

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Competing models disagree on three theoretical questions regarding alcohol-related attentional bias (AB), a key process in severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD): (1) is AB more of a trait (fixed, associated with alcohol use severity) or state (fluid, associated with momentary craving states) characteristic of SAUD; (2) does AB purely reflect the over-activation of the reflexive/reward system or is it also influenced by the activity of the reflective/control system and (3) does AB rely upon early or later processing stages? We addressed these issues by investigating the time-course of AB and its modulation by subjective craving and cognitive load in SAUD.

DESIGN

A free-viewing eye-tracking task, presenting pictures of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, combined with a concurrent cognitive task with three difficulty levels.

SETTING

A laboratory setting in the detoxification units of three Belgian hospitals.

PARTICIPANTS

We included 30 patients with SAUD self-reporting craving at testing time, 30 patients with SAUD reporting a total absence of craving and 30 controls matched on sex and age. All participants from SAUD groups met the DSM-5 criteria for SAUD.

MEASUREMENTS

We assessed AB through early and late eye-tracking indices. We evaluated the modulation of AB by craving (comparison between patients with/without craving) and cognitive load (variation of AB with the difficulty level of the concurrent task).

FINDINGS

Dwell time measure indicated that SAUD patients with craving allocated more attention towards alcohol-related stimuli than patients without craving (P < 0.001, d = 1.093), resulting in opposite approach/avoidance AB according to craving presence/absence. SAUD patients without craving showed a stronger avoidance AB than controls (P = 0.003, d = 0.806). AB did not vary according to cognitive load (P = 0.962, η2 p  = 0.004).

CONCLUSIONS

The direction of alcohol-related attentional bias (approach/avoidance) appears to be determined by patients' subjective craving at testing time and does not function as a stable trait of severe alcohol use disorder. Alcohol-related attentional bias appears to rely on later/controlled attentional stages but is not modulated by the saturation of the reflective/control system.

Attentional and lexical factors underlying word-centred neglect dyslexia errors in healthy readers

Word-centred neglect dyslexia is most commonly conceptualised as a deficit caused by attentional biases within spatially coded internal representations of words. However, recent research has suggested that at least some cases of word-centred neglect dyslexia are unrelated to visuospatial neglect and may instead be modulated by self-inhibition and lexical factors. Here, we set out to provide novel insight into potential underlying mechanisms modulating the occurrence of word-centred lateralised reading errors in healthy participants. A sample of 47 healthy readers completed a novel attentional cueing paradigm in which they sequentially identified lateral cues and read presented words under limited exposure conditions. Reading responses were analysed to determine whether word-centred neglect dyslexia could be simulated in healthy readers, to compare the strengths of induced biases, and to identify systematic differences in lexical characteristics between target words and neglect dyslexia reading errors. Healthy participants produced frequent lateralised reading errors in both horizontal and vertical reading stimuli with > 50% of errors classed as neglect dyslexic. Cues appended to word beginnings elicited significantly more reading errors than cues at word ends, illustrating the interaction between existing reading spatial attentional biases and cue-induced biases. Neglect dyslexia reading errors were found to contain significantly more letters per word and had higher concreteness ratings than target words. These findings demonstrate that word-centred neglect dyslexia can be simulated using attentional cues in healthy readers. These results provide important insight into the mechanisms underlying word-centred neglect dyslexia and further fundamental understanding of this syndrome.

Value-modulated attentional capture is augmented by win-related sensory cues

Attentional prioritisation of stimuli in the environment plays an important role in overt choice. Previous research shows that prioritisation is influenced by the magnitude of paired rewards, in that stimuli signalling high-value rewards are more likely to capture attention than stimuli signalling low-value rewards; and this attentional bias has been proposed to play a role in addictive and compulsive behaviours. A separate line of research has shown that win-related sensory cues can bias overt choices. However, the role that these cues play in attentional selection is yet to be investigated. Participants in this study completed a visual search task in which they responded to a target shape in order to earn reward. The colour of a distractor signalled the magnitude of reward and type of feedback on each trial. Participants were slower to respond to the target when the distractor signalled high reward compared to when the distractor signalled low reward, suggesting that the high-reward distractors had increased attentional priority. Critically, the magnitude of this reward-related attentional bias was further increased for a high-reward distractor with post-trial feedback accompanied by win-related sensory cues. Participants also demonstrated an overt choice preference for the distractor that was associated with win-related sensory cues. These findings demonstrate that stimuli paired with win-related sensory cues are prioritised by the attention system over stimuli with equivalent physical salience and learned value. This attentional prioritisation may have downstream implications for overt choices, especially in gambling contexts where win-related sensory cues are common.

Effects of Aerobic Exercise Combined With Attentional Bias Modification in the Care of Male Patients With a Methamphetamine Use Disorder

OBJECTIVE

It remains unclear which individual or combined strategies are most beneficial for methamphetamine use disorders (MUDs). We compared the effects of aerobic exercise, attentional bias modification, and combined intervention on male patients with MUD.

METHOD

One hundred male patients with MUD were randomly assigned to combined intervention, aerobic exercise, attentional bias modification, or control groups (25 patients per group). The 8-week intervention protocol included three 60-minute sessions of aerobic exercises per week. Primary outcomes included high- and low-frequency heart rate variability, executive function, and cardiorespiratory fitness measured by customized software, computerized tests, and the Harvard step test, respectively. Secondary outcomes included psychiatric symptoms, drug craving, training acceptability, and persistence.

RESULTS

Participant characteristics were matched between groups at baseline. Executive function, heart rate variability, cardiorespiratory fitness, drug craving, and most psychiatric symptoms had significant time-group interactions at posttest (p < .05, η2 = .08-.28). Compared with the attentional bias modification and control groups, the combined intervention and aerobic exercise groups improved significantly in executive function, heart rate variability, cardiorespiratory fitness, and most secondary outcomes. In addition, high-frequency heart rate variability and cardiorespiratory fitness in the aerobic exercise group were significantly higher than those in the combined intervention group.

CONCLUSIONS

Combination strategies showed comparable efficacy to aerobic exercise alone in improving executive function, psychiatric symptoms, and drug craving and significantly exceeded other conditions. For heart rate variability and cardiorespiratory fitness, aerobic exercise alone was the most effective. For acceptability and persistence, combination strategies were preferred over single-domain training and health education intervention.

Attentional suppression of weight-related distractors among females with weight dissatisfaction

Although many studies have investigated attentional biases toward weight-related information among individuals with weight dissatisfaction, the mechanisms underlying the processing of task-irrelevant and spatial-irrelevant weight-related information as distractors remain unclear. Participants were assigned to groups according to their levels of weight dissatisfaction to address this question. Participants with high weight dissatisfaction (HWD) were assigned to the experimental group; those with low weight dissatisfaction (LWD) were assigned to a control group. By recording event-related potentials during a visual search task along the median vertical line, fatness-related/thinness-related/neutral words and scrambled strokes were presented horizontally in pairs as task-irrelevant distractors. The results showed that intact words facilitated fast attentional orienting compared to scrambled strokes, as revealed by the significant N2pc for all types of intact words for both the HWD and LWD groups. More importantly, only fatness- and thinness-related words elicited the evident PD in the HWD group, and the PD amplitudes were larger in the HWD group compared to the LWD group. These findings suggest that weight-related distractors were actively suppressed after initial attentional orienting among females with HWD. This reveals the mechanisms of attentional biases toward weight-related information among females with HWD and contributes to the model of the cognitive-behavioral theory of body image disturbance. These results may help enhance prevention and interventions for reducing weight dissatisfaction.

The effect of uncertainty on attentional bias in subclinical worriers: Evidence from reaction time and eye-tracking

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

High-worry individuals have been assumed to show attentional bias towards threat, particularly under high uncertainty. This study experimentally investigated the effect of uncertainty on attentional bias in subclinical worriers.

METHODS

A visual dot-probe task combined with eye-tracking was used to assess participants' attentional bias towards blurred and unfiltered stimuli. Fifty high-worry and 47 low-worry participants were randomly assigned to either the high- or low-uncertainty threat condition. Aversive noise bursts were delivered either unpredictably (the high-uncertainty threat condition) or predictably (the low-uncertainty threat condition) during the visual dot-probe task.

RESULTS

In the low-uncertainty threat condition, high-worry participants exhibited enhanced attentional engagement towards blurred pictures compared to low-worry participants. They also had shorter initial fixation latencies on blurred pictures than on unfiltered pictures. In the high-uncertainty threat condition, high-worry participants demonstrated more difficulty in disengaging from threatening pictures compared to low-worry participants.

LIMITATION

First, this study used a nonclinical sample. Second, the power was limited with regard to the analysis of eye-movement data. Third, anxiety and worry induced by noise bursts were measured using subjective rating scales only. Fourth, some picture characteristics, such as luminosity and complexity, were not controlled. Finally, uncertainty related to delivery of noise bursts and pictures were both manipulated dichotomously.

CONCLUSION

This study highlights the importance of uncertainty in the maintenance of attentional bias towards threat-related pictures in high-worry individuals.

Examining the role of trait anxiety and attentional bias to negative information in intrusion vulnerability following an emotionally negative event

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Research shows that individuals with heightened trait anxiety are more likely to experience intrusions; however, the mechanism that accounts for this relationship is unclear. Two alternative hypotheses were tested to determine the nature of the associations between trait anxiety, attentional bias to negative information, and intrusion vulnerability.

METHODS

Intrusions were elicited using the trauma film paradigm, and post-event attentional bias to negative information was assessed using the dot-probe task. Participants then completed a week-long intrusions diary.

RESULTS

Results showed that attentional bias to negative information mediated the effect of heightened trait anxiety on elevated intrusion frequency. It was also revealed that heightened trait anxiety was associated with elevated intrusion-related distress, though attentional bias to negative information did not mediate this relationship.

LIMITATIONS

Our sample was comprised of undergraduate students who were not selected based on a previous pathology. Replication in clinical samples is warranted.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide new insight regarding individual differences in the experience of intrusions and suggest that both the frequency and distress associated with intrusions could represent clinical targets.

Attentional bias modification in male college smokers: The changes of facilitated attention, difficulty in disengagement and the transfer effects of training

BACKGROUND

Attentional bias modification (ABM) has been used to modify the attentional bias (AB) towards smoking-related cues. Still, the effects of ABM are extensively controversial. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of ABM on AB and its two sub-processes named facilitated attention and difficulty in disengagement at two different stimulus durations, as well as test whether the effects of ABM could transfer to new measures of AB.

METHOD

Forty-six male college smokers were allocated to either ABM group using a modified visual probe task (n = 24), or the corresponding placebo training (PT) group (n = 22). Participants performed three sessions of training in one week. The pre- and post-training AB and its sub-processes were measured using visual probe task. Cue-target task and pictorial Stroop task were used for testing the transfer effects of ABM.

RESULTS

The AB in ABM group was significantly decreased compared with the PT group. Specifically, the facilitated attention was significantly reduced at 200 ms stimulus duration, while the difficulty in disengagement was significantly decreased at 500 ms stimulus duration. The benefit of ABM training could transfer to the cue-target task, but not to the pictorial Stroop task. Meanwhile, no effects of ABM were observed on smoking craving and nicotine dependence.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggested that the stimulus duration is a crucial factor for the efficacy of ABM on the facilitated attention and the difficulty in disengagement in male college smokers and detected the transfer effects between different measures of AB to some extent. Future studies need to further explore the influence mechanism in distinct stimulus durations.

An experimental investigation of biased attention in non-suicidal self-injury: The effects of perfectionism and emotional valence on attentional engagement and disengagement

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Theoretical models of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) propose that individuals who self-injure may find their attention more strongly captured by negative emotion, and that this intensifies distress which leads to episodes of NSSI. Elevated perfectionism is associated with NSSI, and when an individual is highly perfectionistic, a focus on perceived flaws/failures may increase risk of NSSI. We explored how history of NSSI and trait perfectionism are associated with different types of attention bias (engagement vs. disengagement) to stimuli that differ in emotional valence (negative vs positive) and perfectionism relevance (relevant vs irrelevant).

METHODS

Undergraduate university students (N = 242) completed measures of NSSI, perfectionism, and a modified dot-probe task to measure attentional engagement with and disengagement from both positive and negative stimuli.

RESULTS

There were interactions between NSSI and perfectionism in attention biases. Amongst individuals who engage in NSSI, those with elevated trait perfectionism exhibit speeded responding to and disengagement from emotional stimuli (both positive and negative). Furthermore, individuals with a history of NSSI and elevated perfectionism were slower to respond to positive stimuli, and faster to negative stimuli.

LIMITATIONS

This experiment was cross-sectional in design so does not provide information about temporal ordering of these relationships, and given the use of a community sample, would benefit from replication in clinical samples.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings lend support to the emerging idea that biased attention plays a role in how perfectionism is associated with NSSI. Future studies should replicate these findings using other behavioural paradigms and diverse samples.

Nicotine deprivation amplifies attentional bias toward racial discrimination stimuli in African American adults who smoke cigarettes

High smoking prevalence and low quit smoking rates among African American adults are well-documented, but poorly understood. We tested a transdisciplinary theoretical model of psychopharmacological-social mechanisms underlying smoking among African American adults. This model proposes that nicotine's acute attention-filtering effects may enhance smoking's addictiveness in populations unduly exposed to discrimination, like African American adults, because nicotine reduces the extent to which discrimination-related stimuli capture attention, and in turn, generate distress. During nicotine deprivation, attentional biases toward discrimination may be unmasked and exacerbated, which may induce distress and perpetuate smoking. To test this model, this within-subject laboratory experiment determined whether attentional bias toward racial discrimination stimuli was amplified by nicotine deprivation in African American adults who smoked daily. Participants (N = 344) completed a computerized modified Stroop task assessing attentional interference from racial discrimination-related words during two counterbalanced sessions (nicotine sated vs. overnight nicotine deprived). The task required participants to quickly name the color of discrimination and matched neutral words. Word Type (Discrimination vs. Neutral) × Pharmacological State (Nicotine Deprived vs. Sated) effects on color naming reaction times were examined. Attentional bias toward racial discrimination-related stimuli was amplified in nicotine deprived (reaction time to discrimination minus neutral stimuli: M [95%CI] = 34.69 [29.62, 39.76] ms; d = 0.15) compared to sated (M [95%CI] = 24.88 [19.84, 29.91] ms; d = 0.11) conditions (Word Type × Pharmacological State, p < .0001). The impact of nicotine deprivation on attentional processes in the context of adverse societal conditions merit consideration in future science and intervention addressing smoking in African American adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Attentional biases in facial emotion processing in individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis

Individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis exhibit altered facial emotion processing (FEP) and poor social functioning. It is unclear whether FEP deficits result from attentional biases, and further, how these abnormalities are linked to symptomatology (e.g., negative symptoms) and highly comorbid disorders that are also tied to abnormal FEP (e.g., depression). In the present study, we employed an eye-tracking paradigm to assess attentional biases and clinical interviews to examine differences between CHR (N = 34) individuals and healthy controls (HC; N = 46), as well as how such biases relate to symptoms and functioning in CHR individuals. Although no CHR-HC differences emerged in attentional biases, within the CHR group, symptoms and functioning were related to biases. Depressive symptoms were related to some free-view attention switching biases (e.g., to and from fearful faces, r = .50). Negative symptoms were related to more slowly disengaging from happy faces (r = .44), spending less time looking at neutral faces (r =  - .42), and more time looking at no face (Avolition, r = .44). In addition, global social functioning was related to processes that overlapped with both depression and negative symptoms, including time looking at no face (r =  - .68) and free-view attention switching with fearful faces (r =  - .40). These findings are consistent with previous research, indicating that negative symptoms play a prominent role in the CHR syndrome, with distinct mechanisms relative to depression. Furthermore, the results suggest that attentional bias indices from eye-tracking paradigms may be predictive of social functioning.

Attention biases for emotional facial expressions during a free viewing task increase between 2.5 and 5 years of age

The normative, developmental changes in affect-biased attention during the preschool years are largely unknown. To investigate the attention bias for emotional versus neutral faces, an eye-tracking measurement and free viewing of paired pictures of facial expressions (i.e., happy, fearful, sad, or angry faces) and nonface pictures with neutral faces were conducted with 367 children participating in a Finnish cohort study at the age of 2.5 years and with 477 children at the age of 5 years, 216 of which having follow-up measurements. We found an attention-orienting bias for happy and fearful faces versus neutral faces at both age points. An attention-orienting bias for sad faces emerged between 2.5 and 5 years. In addition, there were significant biases in sustained attention toward happy, fearful, sad, and angry faces versus neutral faces, with a bias in sustained attention for fearful faces being the strongest. All biases in sustained attention increased between 2.5 and 5 years of age. Moderate correlations in saccadic latencies were found between 2.5 and 5 years. In conclusion, attention biases for emotional facial expressions seem to be age-specific and specific for the attentional subcomponent. This implies that future studies on affect-biased attention during the preschool years should use small age ranges and cover multiple subcomponents of attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The long-term effects of ABM on symptom severity in patients with recurrent depression: A randomized sham-controlled trial

BACKGROUND

The present study reports on long-term outcomes of ABM over one year in self-reported and clinician-rated depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and relapse rates.

METHODS

We conducted a double-blind randomized sham-controlled trial in 301 participants with recurrent major depression disorder between January 2015 and October 2016 (#NCT02658682). Participants were allocated to ABM or sham condition twice daily for 14 consecutive days. Long-term effects of ABM were assessed by BDI-II, HDRS and BAI at one-, six-, and 12-months follow-up. Relapse rates at 12-months follow-up were also assessed.

RESULTS

There was no long-term effect of ABM (as compared to sham) on clinician-rated depression symptoms, on anxiety symptoms, nor in relapse rates. By 12 months follow-up, there was a small effect on self-reported depression favoring ABM over sham.

LIMITATIONS

The lack of an assessment-only condition hinders comparison to natural trajectories of depression symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

The overall long-term effect of ABM was limited, and currently there is no convincing evidence for implementing this as a viable treatment option in clinical populations. We speculate if the sham condition should be replaced by another control condition when investigating the clinical utility of ABM.

Blunted neurobiological reactivity and attentional bias to threat underlie stress-related disorders in women survivors of intimate partner violence

BACKGROUND

Intimate partner violence (IPV) alters women's neurobiological stress response systems. We propose that individual differences early in the attentional processing of threats are associated with these neurobiological mechanisms and contribute to mental illness in this population.

METHODS

We assessed attentional bias in relation to threat (AB) in women survivors of IPV (n = 69) and controls (n = 36), and examined overall cortisol secretion using hair cortisol (HC), and stress responsiveness measuring salivary cortisol and α-amylase (sAA) before (T0), and after (T1, T2) an acute psychosocial stress task (Trier Social Stress Test). We used repeated-measures ANCOVAs to explore the associations between Group (IPV, control) and AB with acute stress response, and regression models to examine the associations with mental health symptoms.

RESULTS

There were no between-group differences in HC levels. An interaction between Group and AB was found regarding cortisol reactivity (p < 0.05). IPV women with threat avoidance AB showed a blunted cortisol response compared to controls and to IPV participants with threat vigilance AB. The association between sAA reactivity and the interaction between Group, AB, and time approached significance (p = 0.07), with a trend to lower sAA levels particularly in IPV women with threat avoidance AB. Group and cortisol reactivity were associated with symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (8-20% explained variance).

CONCLUSIONS

Threat avoidance AB is associated with blunted acute cortisol response among women exposed to chronic stress (IPV). Experiencing IPV and acute cortisol response appear to be clearly implicated in long-term mental health problems.

Implicit cognitions in problematic social network use

Implicit cognitions may be involved in the development and maintenance of specific Internet use disorders such as problematic social network use (PSNU). In more detail, implicit attitude, attentional biases, approach and avoidance tendencies as well as semantic memory associations are considered relevant in the context of PSNU. This viewpoint article summarizes the available literature on implicit cognitions in PSNU. We systematically reviewed articles of implicit cognitions in PSNU from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases based on a targeted search strategy and assessed using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The present findings suggest that specific implicit cognitions are important in the context of PSNU and therefore show parallels to other addictive behaviors. However, the empirical evidence is limited to a few studies on this topic. Implicit cognitions in PSNU should be explored in more depth and in the context of other affective and cognitive mechanisms in future work.

Effect of body-related information on food attentional bias in women with body weight dissatisfaction

Women with body weight dissatisfaction (BWD) have long-term negative assessments of their body weight, which are often associated with poor eating behavior. In this study, we investigated the effect of body-related information on the food cue processing and attention of women with BWD. Sixty-eight women were recruited and assigned to either a BWD (NPSS-F > 2) (n = 32) or a no body weight dissatisfaction (NBWD) group (NPSS-F < 1) (n = 36). We measured attentional bias to food cues (high- and low-calorie) with a food probe task after exposure to body-related information and recorded eye tracking data. Body-related images were presented prior to a pair of stimulus images (food-neutral or neutral-neutral). Body-related information and food type were repeated measure factors in our study. Our results showed that the first fixation duration bias for high-calorie foods was significantly longer than for low-calorie foods after exposure to overweight cues in the BWD group. Compared with the NBWD group, the BWD group showed longer first fixation duration bias for high-calorie foods after exposure to overweight cues. The direction for high-calorie foods was significantly more often than that for low-calorie foods in the BWD group after exposure to body-related information. Our findings suggest that compared to women with NBWD, women with BWD may be more susceptible to body-related information, resulting in increased attention to high-calorie foods.

Increased error rate and delayed response to negative emotional stimuli in antisaccade task in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Ample evidence links impaired inhibitory control, attentional distortions, emotional dysregulation, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, it remains unclear what underlies the deficit that triggers the OCD cycle. The present study used an antisaccade paradigm with emotional valences to compare eye movement patterns reflecting inhibitory control and attention switching in OCD and healthy control groups. Thirty-two patients with OCD and thirty healthy controls performed the antisaccade task with neutral, positive, and negative visual images served as fixation stimuli. Presentation of the fixation stimulus overlapped with target stimuli appearance for 200 ms. The OCD group showed more errors to negative stimuli than the control group and they also performed antisaccades more slowly to negative and neutral stimuli than positive ones. Other patterns, including mean gaze velocity of correct antisaccades did not differ between groups. The mean gaze velocity of correct antisaccades was higher for negative and positive stimuli than for neutral stimuli in both groups. The peak velocity parameter did not show any differences either between groups or between valences. The findings support a hypothesis that an attentional bias toward negative stimuli interferes with inhibitory control in OCD.

Development and Evaluation of Linguistic Stimuli for Pain Research

Linguistic stimuli are commonly used in research to investigate the processing of pain. To provide researchers with a dataset of pain-related and non-pain-related linguistic stimuli, this research investigated 1) the associative strength between pain-related words and the pain construct; 2) the pain-relatedness ratings of pain words; and 3) the variability in the relatedness of pain words within pain word classifications (eg, sensory pain words). In Study 1, 194 pain-related and matched non-pain-related words were retrieved by reviewing the pain-related attentional bias literature. In Study 2, adults with (n = 85) and without (n = 48) self-reported chronic pain completed a speeded word categorization paradigm and rated the pain-relatedness of a subset of pain words. Analyses revealed that 1) despite differences in associative strength of 11.3% of the words between chronic and non-chronic pain groups, no overall group difference was found, 2) the chronic pain group rated the pain words as more pain-related compared to the non-chronic pain group, and 3) there was variability in the relatedness of pain words within pain word classifications. The findings highlight the importance of validating linguistic pain stimuli. The resulting dataset is openly accessible and new published sets can be added to the Linguistic Materials for Pain (LMaP) Repository. PERSPECTIVE: This article presents the development and preliminary evaluation of a large pool of pain-related and non-pain-related words in adults with and without self-reported chronic pain. Findings are discussed and guidelines are offered to select the most suitable stimuli for future research.

Generalisation of value-based attentional priority is category-specific

A large body of research suggests that previously reward-associated stimuli can capture attention. Recent evidence also suggests that value-driven attentional biases can occur for a particular category of objects. However, it is unclear how broadly these category-level attentional biases can generalise. In the present study, we examined whether value-driven attentional biases can generalise to new exemplars of a category or semantically related categories using a modified version of the value-driven attentional capture paradigm. In an initial training phase, participants searched for two categories of objects and were rewarded for correctly fixating members of one target category. In a subsequent test phase, participants searched for two new categories of objects. A new exemplar of one of the previous target categories or a member of a semantically related category could appear as a critical distractor in this phase. Participants were more likely to initially fixate the critical distractor and fixated the distractor longer when it was a new exemplar of the previously rewarded category. However, similar findings were not observed for members of semantically related categories. Together, these findings suggest that the generalisation of value-based attentional priority is category-specific.

Investigating the cognitive processing of tools: Effects of dangerousness and directionality on attentional biases

Research has found a tool-based head-superiority effect (responses are faster to target stimuli that appear at the head than at the handle position). However, these studies did not consider the effects of directionality and dangerousness. This study investigated how directionality and dangerousness influence the head-superiority effect. Subjects were required to respond to the target location in all experiments. Experiment 1 manipulated the directionality, dangerousness and target location. Experiment 2 matched the sharpness of the tool tip in the directed conditions. Experiment 3 shortened the presentation time of the cue stimuli from 800 ms to 200 ms. Experiment 4 selected four tools with different functions to rule out an alternative explanation caused by functional repetition. The results indicate that a head-superiority effect emerges in the directed condition, and that dangerousness modulates the magnitude of this effect during the 800 ms condition. However, the modulation effect of dangerousness diminishes during the 200 ms condition.

Attention toward emotions is modulated by familiarity with the expressor: A comparison between bonobos and humans

Why can humans be intolerant of, yet also be empathic toward strangers? This cardinal question can be tackled by studying emotions in our closest living relatives, bonobos. Their striking xenophilic tendencies make them an interesting model for reconstructing the socioemotional capacities of the last common ancestor of hominids. Within two dot-probe studies, we compared bonobos' and humans' attention toward scenes depicting familiar (kith and kin) or unfamiliar individuals with emotional or neutral expressions. Results show that the attention of bonobos is biased toward emotional scenes depicting unfamiliar bonobos, but not toward emotional groupmates (Study 1). In contrast, Study 2 shows that human attention is biased toward emotional rather than neutral expressions of family and friends, but not toward unfamiliar others. On the one hand, our results show that an attentional bias toward emotions is a shared phenomenon between humans and bonobos, but on the other, both species have their own unique evolutionarily informed biases. These findings support previously proposed adaptive explanations for xenophilia in bonobos that potentially biases them toward emotional expressions of unfamiliar conspecifics, and parochialism in humans, which makes them sensitive to the emotional expressions of close others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Selection history contributes to suboptimal attention strategies

Attentional control balances the competing drives of performance maximization and effort minimization. One way the attention system minimizes effort is through a bias to persist in the use of attentional control strategies that have been useful in the past. In the present study, we asked whether such selection history can result in the persistence of an attentional control strategy that is counterproductive, effectively competing with a more optimal strategy. Participants first completed a training in which one color target was encountered more frequently than another, and then completed a test phase in which they could search for one of two targets on any given trial, one of which would be more optimal to search for given the distribution of color stimuli. An attentional bias for the more frequent target color was observed in the training phase and the choice of which target to report was robustly optimal in the test phase, reflecting performance maximization. Importantly, participants also exhibited a tendency to report the target rendered in the previously more frequent target color in the test phase, even when the distribution of non-target colors made it suboptimal to do so. Our findings shed light on the fundamental question of why attentional control is sometimes suboptimal, demonstrating a role for selection history in the perseveration of previously employed attentional strategies even when such strategies produce suboptimal performance.

The effect of attention bias modification on depressive symptoms in a comorbid sample: a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Studies investigating the long-term effect of attention bias modification (ABM) in clinical samples are lacking. This study investigates the 6-months follow-up effect of ABM on depressive symptoms in participant with major depressive disorder with and without comorbid disorders.

METHODS

We conducted a double-blind randomized sham-controlled trial in 101 participants between 19 November 2019, and 17 August 2021. Follow-up ended 3 April 2022. Participants were allocated to ABM or sham condition twice daily for 14 consecutive days. Primary outcomes were the total score on the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) at 6 months, mean Brief State Rumination Inventory (BSRI) score post-treatment and reduction in BSRI post-treatment. Secondary outcome was change in attentional bias (AB). The trial was preregistered in ClinicalTrials.gov (#NCT04137367).

RESULTS

A total of 118 patients aged 18-65 years were assessed for eligibility, and 101 were randomized and subjected to intention-to-treat analyses. At 6 months, ABM had no effect on depression and anxiety compared to a sham condition. While rumination decreased during the intervention, there was no effect of condition on rumination and AB. Predictor analysis did not reveal differences between participants with ongoing major depressive episode or comorbid anxiety.

CONCLUSION

Compared to sham training, there was no effect of ABM on depressive symptoms at 6-months follow-up. Since the intervention failed at modifying AB, it is unclear whether changes in AB are related to long-term outcomes.

Attentional bias towards social interactions during viewing of naturalistic scenes

Human visual attention is readily captured by the social information in scenes. Multiple studies have shown that social areas of interest (AOIs) such as faces and bodies attract more attention than non-social AOIs (e.g., objects or background). However, whether this attentional bias is moderated by the presence (or absence) of a social interaction remains unclear. Here, the gaze of 70 young adults was tracked during the free viewing of 60 naturalistic scenes. All photographs depicted two people, who were either interacting or not. Analyses of dwell time revealed that more attention was spent on human than background AOIs in the interactive pictures. In non-interactive pictures, however, dwell time did not differ between AOI type. In the time-to-first-fixation analysis, humans always captured attention before other elements of the scene, although this difference was slightly larger in interactive than non-interactive scenes. These findings confirm the existence of a bias towards social information in attentional capture and suggest our attention values social interactions beyond the presence of two people.

Can we change automatic processes: the influence of social priming on alcohol attentional bias

The Stroop Effect has been linked to social concept priming, suggesting that the latter may trigger automatic behaviour aligned with the primed concept. This study examined the effects of social priming on alcohol attentional bias, with a sample of mostly light drinkers; it used a social priming task and an alcohol-Stroop test to measure participants' response times (RTs) before and after they had been socially primed. Participants were separated into one of three social priming conditions: Neutral, Alcohol Addiction, and Alcohol Preoccupation. A mixed ANOVA was run to determine whether participants' RTs to alcohol-related stimuli, "rather than to neutral sitmuli," slowed significantly after the alcohol interference tasks, relative to the neutral interference task, suggesting an alcohol attentional bias had been induced by the social priming exercise. Key interaction terms did not reveal such an interaction, but rather a general slowing down (for both neutral and alcohol stimuli), in the Alcohol conditions, relative to the Neutral one. As a result, we can conclude that while we did not induce an alcohol-specific bias in participants, we did discover a generalised interference effect, following alcohol-related social priming tasks.

Vertical attention bias for tops of objects and bottoms of scenes

Past research demonstrated a top-salience bias in object identification, with random shapes appearing more similar when they share the same top versus the same bottom. This is consistent with tops of natural objects and lifeforms tending to be more informative locations of intentionality and functionality, leading observers to favor attending to tops. However, this bias may also reflect a generic downward vantage tendency that occurs with more informative interactive aspects of scenes typically lying below the horizon. Two experiments test for this overall pattern of vertical attention bias (VAB) for both objects and scenes. Participants observed picture triptychs and judged if the center object or scene appeared more similar to flanking comparison figures that contain the same top versus same bottom. Experiment 1 used vertically information-balanced impoverished stimuli, either polygon objects or polygon-array scenes. Experiment 2 extended the triptych stimuli to naturalistic objects or scenes. Results generally support a VAB for object tops and scene bottoms that varies as a function of the informative aspects of visually attended stimuli. This pattern held for information-balanced objects but not scenes, however, with more ecologically valid naturalistic stimuli, VAB was large and robust, consistent with a vertical information imbalance that drives a generic downward vantage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).