The influence of emotional stimuli on attention orienting and inhibitory control in pediatric anxiety

Mueller, Sven, Hardin, Michael, Mogg, Karin, Benson, Valerie, Bradley, Brendan P., Reinholdt-Dunne, Marie Louise, Liversedge, Simon P., Pine, Daniel and Ernst, Monique (2012) The influence of emotional stimuli on attention orienting and inhibitory control in pediatric anxiety. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 53 (8), 856-863. (doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2012.02541.x).

Abstract

Background: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in children and adolescents, and are associated with aberrant emotion-related attention orienting and inhibitory control. While recent studies conducted with high-trait anxious adults have employed novel emotion-modified antisaccade tasks to examine the influence of emotional information on orienting and inhibition, similar studies have yet to be conducted in youths.

Methods: Participants were 22 children/adolescents diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and 22 age-matched healthy comparison youths. Participants completed an emotion-modified antisaccade task that was similar to those used in studies of high-trait anxious adults. This task probed the influence of abruptly appearing neutral, happy, angry, or fear stimuli on orienting (prosaccade) or inhibitory (antisaccade) responses.

Results: Anxious compared to healthy children showed facilitated orienting toward angry stimuli. With respect to inhibitory processes, threat-related information improved antisaccade accuracy in healthy but not anxious youth. These findings were not linked to individual levels of reported anxiety or specific anxiety disorders.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that anxious relative to healthy children manifest enhanced orienting toward threat-related stimuli. In addition, the current findings suggest that threat may modulate inhibitory control during adolescent development.

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Contributors

Author: Brendan P. Bradley

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