Effects of age and anxiety on processing threat cues in healthy children
Reinholdt-Dunne, M.L., Mogg, K., Esbjorn, B.H. and Bradley, B.P. (2012) Effects of age and anxiety on processing threat cues in healthy children. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology (doi:10.5127/jep.019611).
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Description/Abstract
This study investigated relationships between childhood anxiety, chronological age and threat processing biases. It used a cross-sectional design comparing younger and older children, separated using a median-split on trait anxiety scores into low-anxious versus moderately-anxious groups. Participants were 67 schoolchildren, aged 7–14 years, who completed emotional Stroop and visual probe tasks with angry, happy, and neutral faces. Results from both tasks showed (i) a main effect of age on emotion processing, i.e., increased bias for emotional relative to neutral faces in younger than older children, and (ii) a moderating effect of age on anxiety-related bias for threat. That is, on the modified Stroop task, an enhanced processing bias for angry faces, relative to neutral faces, was found only in the group of moderately-anxious younger children. This bias appeared to be specific to angry faces, as it was not found for happy faces. On the visual probe task, moderately-anxious younger children also showed an enhanced attentional bias for angry faces, relative to neutral faces; in addition, they also showed a similar bias for happy relative to neutral faces. Taken together, findings suggest that moderately-anxious younger children show enhanced processing of threat, relative to neutral information, and that this anxiety-related threat bias lessens with age.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| ISSNs: | 2043-8087 (print) |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RB Pathology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry |
| Divisions: | University Structure - Pre August 2011 > School of Psychology > Division of Clinical Neuroscience Faculty of Social and Human Sciences > Psychology > Clinical Neuroscience |
| Item ID: | 190201 |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Jun 2011 10:17 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Feb 2012 10:44 |
| Contributors: | Reinholdt-Dunne, M.L. (Author) Mogg, K. (Author) Esbjorn, B.H. (Author) Bradley, B.P. (Author) |
| Date: | 2012 |
| Status: | Published |
| URI: | http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/190201 |
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