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Selective attention to threat in childhood anxiety: evidence from visual probe paradigms

Selective attention to threat in childhood anxiety: evidence from visual probe paradigms
Selective attention to threat in childhood anxiety: evidence from visual probe paradigms
Visual probe tasks continue to show promise as a tool with which to clarify biases in selective attention to threat in child and adolescent anxiety. Research to date has revealed considerable evidence of greater vigilance to lexical and pictorial threat (e.g. affective images and emotional facial expressions) in anxious children, with evidence of avoidance more likely in children who have experienced extreme levels of threat (physical abuse) and/or are tested in potentially anxiogenic environments [i.e. withinmagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner].While evidence in anxious children is broadly consistent with findings in adult samples and appears consistent with predictions from cognitive models of threat processing in anxiety, future studies need to clarify the development, component processes and time course of attentional bias in child and adolescent populations. To this end, studies in children should me mindful of developments in the adult literature, particularly regarding the psychonomics of visual probe indices of selective attention. Mechanisms that underlie the development and regulation of attentional bias to threat throughout childhood remain unclear, and longitudinal studies are necessary to test predictions from original developmental models and extend promising initial evidence that supports verbal learning pathways to cognitive bias. In doing so, interactions between environmental and genetic risk factors that modulate neural and cognitive mechanisms that underlie bias in selective attention should be explored. The clinical utility of attention retraining techniques for child and adolescent anxiety has yet to be realized; however, evidence from visual probe training paradigms in adult anxiety and initial findings in children identify attentional bias as a mechanism through which anxiety may emerge and resolve. Convergent evidence from concurrent eye tracking and event-related potentials will help clarify the time course of attention allocation to threat in children, particularly younger children forwhommanualRTdata alonemay prove insensitive to individual differences, while continued integration of visual probe paradigms with functional imaging (e.g. fMRI) techniques will further delineate the neural structures and functional connectivity involved in the activation and control of selective attention to threat. This data should inform recent connectionist network models of attentional bias within visual probe tasks (e.g. Frewen et al., 2008) with a view to providing biologically plausible dynamic models of selective attention to threat and its development
childhood, anxiety, attention
9780470998199
77-109
Wiley
Garner, Matthew
3221c5b3-b951-4fec-b456-ec449e4ce072
Hadwin, Julie A.
Field, Andy P.
Garner, Matthew
3221c5b3-b951-4fec-b456-ec449e4ce072
Hadwin, Julie A.
Field, Andy P.

Garner, Matthew (2010) Selective attention to threat in childhood anxiety: evidence from visual probe paradigms. In, Hadwin, Julie A. and Field, Andy P. (eds.) Information Processing Biases and Anxiety: A Developmental Perspective. Chichester, UK. Wiley, pp. 77-109.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

Visual probe tasks continue to show promise as a tool with which to clarify biases in selective attention to threat in child and adolescent anxiety. Research to date has revealed considerable evidence of greater vigilance to lexical and pictorial threat (e.g. affective images and emotional facial expressions) in anxious children, with evidence of avoidance more likely in children who have experienced extreme levels of threat (physical abuse) and/or are tested in potentially anxiogenic environments [i.e. withinmagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner].While evidence in anxious children is broadly consistent with findings in adult samples and appears consistent with predictions from cognitive models of threat processing in anxiety, future studies need to clarify the development, component processes and time course of attentional bias in child and adolescent populations. To this end, studies in children should me mindful of developments in the adult literature, particularly regarding the psychonomics of visual probe indices of selective attention. Mechanisms that underlie the development and regulation of attentional bias to threat throughout childhood remain unclear, and longitudinal studies are necessary to test predictions from original developmental models and extend promising initial evidence that supports verbal learning pathways to cognitive bias. In doing so, interactions between environmental and genetic risk factors that modulate neural and cognitive mechanisms that underlie bias in selective attention should be explored. The clinical utility of attention retraining techniques for child and adolescent anxiety has yet to be realized; however, evidence from visual probe training paradigms in adult anxiety and initial findings in children identify attentional bias as a mechanism through which anxiety may emerge and resolve. Convergent evidence from concurrent eye tracking and event-related potentials will help clarify the time course of attention allocation to threat in children, particularly younger children forwhommanualRTdata alonemay prove insensitive to individual differences, while continued integration of visual probe paradigms with functional imaging (e.g. fMRI) techniques will further delineate the neural structures and functional connectivity involved in the activation and control of selective attention to threat. This data should inform recent connectionist network models of attentional bias within visual probe tasks (e.g. Frewen et al., 2008) with a view to providing biologically plausible dynamic models of selective attention to threat and its development

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More information

Published date: April 2010
Keywords: childhood, anxiety, attention

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 72188
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/72188
ISBN: 9780470998199
PURE UUID: f340062b-5fbc-4833-9659-3d7cd2f443d7
ORCID for Matthew Garner: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9481-2226

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 15 Mar 2010
Last modified: 10 Aug 2023 01:36

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Contributors

Author: Matthew Garner ORCID iD
Editor: Julie A. Hadwin
Editor: Andy P. Field

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