Attention bias toward threat in pediatric anxiety disorders

Abstract

Objective: to examine attention bias towards threat faces in a large sample of anxiety-disordered
youths using a well-established visual probe task.

Method: study participants included 101 children and adolescents (ages 7- 18 years) with
generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia and/or separation anxiety disorder enrolled in a multisite
anxiety treatment study. Non-anxious youths (n = 51; ages 9 - 18 years) were recruited separately.
Participants were administered a computerized visual probe task that presents pairs of faces
portraying threat (angry), positive (happy) and neutral expressions. They pressed a response-key to
indicate the spatial location of a probe that replaced one of the faces on each trial. Attention bias
scores were calculated from response times to probes for each emotional face type.

Results: compared to healthy youths, anxious participants demonstrated a greater attention bias
towards threat faces. This threat bias in anxious patients did not significantly vary across the anxiety
disorders. There was no group difference in attention bias towards happy faces.

Conclusions: these results suggest that pediatric anxiety disorders are associated with an
attention bias towards threat. Future research might examine the manner in which cognitive bias in
anxious youth changes with treatment.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Brendan P. Bradley: orcid.org/0000-0003-2801-4271

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