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Attention bias for angry faces in children with social phobia

Attention bias for angry faces in children with social phobia
Attention bias for angry faces in children with social phobia
Attention bias towards threatening stimuli is a well-established cognitive correlate of anxiety disorders. In tasks using angry faces, accumulating results link paediatric anxiety to biased attention. Nevertheless, at least in childhood social phobia, there is mixed evidence regarding the direction of this bias as some findings suggest that socially anxious children show increased attention bias towards threat, whereas other evidence suggests they have an increased bias away from threat. The present study examined attention bias for angry (and happy) faces in 27 children with a principal diagnosis of social phobia and 27 non-clinical healthy volunteers between 5 and 13 years of age. Children completed a visual probe task in which pairs of angry and neutral faces and happy and neutral faces were presented for 500 ms followed by an asterisk probe in either the same or opposite location as the emotional face. Participants were instructed to respond quickly by key-press to indicate the position of the probe. Results showed that only socially phobic children with high symptom severity showed a significant attention bias towards angry faces relative to neutral ones. In contrast, children with social phobia with lower levels of symptom severity showed a significant attention bias away from angry faces. Non-anxious volunteers showed no significant bias for angry faces. There were no significant between-group differences for happy faces. Results are discussed in terms of prior work on attention and emotion regulation.
2043-8087
475-489
Waters, Alison M.
519b6c01-fe71-4bfc-92fd-d740733dce28
Mogg, Karin
5f1474af-85f5-4fd3-8eb6-0371be848e30
Bradley, Brendan P.
bdacaa6c-528b-4086-9448-27ebfe463514
Pine, Daniel S.
debffc1c-1efc-4bcf-81b3-87aadee1047d
Waters, Alison M.
519b6c01-fe71-4bfc-92fd-d740733dce28
Mogg, Karin
5f1474af-85f5-4fd3-8eb6-0371be848e30
Bradley, Brendan P.
bdacaa6c-528b-4086-9448-27ebfe463514
Pine, Daniel S.
debffc1c-1efc-4bcf-81b3-87aadee1047d

Waters, Alison M., Mogg, Karin, Bradley, Brendan P. and Pine, Daniel S. (2012) Attention bias for angry faces in children with social phobia. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 2, 475-489. (doi:10.5127/jep.018111).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Attention bias towards threatening stimuli is a well-established cognitive correlate of anxiety disorders. In tasks using angry faces, accumulating results link paediatric anxiety to biased attention. Nevertheless, at least in childhood social phobia, there is mixed evidence regarding the direction of this bias as some findings suggest that socially anxious children show increased attention bias towards threat, whereas other evidence suggests they have an increased bias away from threat. The present study examined attention bias for angry (and happy) faces in 27 children with a principal diagnosis of social phobia and 27 non-clinical healthy volunteers between 5 and 13 years of age. Children completed a visual probe task in which pairs of angry and neutral faces and happy and neutral faces were presented for 500 ms followed by an asterisk probe in either the same or opposite location as the emotional face. Participants were instructed to respond quickly by key-press to indicate the position of the probe. Results showed that only socially phobic children with high symptom severity showed a significant attention bias towards angry faces relative to neutral ones. In contrast, children with social phobia with lower levels of symptom severity showed a significant attention bias away from angry faces. Non-anxious volunteers showed no significant bias for angry faces. There were no significant between-group differences for happy faces. Results are discussed in terms of prior work on attention and emotion regulation.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: April 2011
Published date: 2012

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 184437
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/184437
ISSN: 2043-8087
PURE UUID: 65e64ea9-b439-4cc1-8bca-30daf33bdca8
ORCID for Brendan P. Bradley: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2801-4271

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Date deposited: 06 May 2011 08:36
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:08

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Contributors

Author: Alison M. Waters
Author: Karin Mogg
Author: Daniel S. Pine

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