Attention Bias of Anxious Youth During Extended Exposure of Emotional Face Pairs: an Eye-tracking Study

Overview

Journal Depress Anxiety

Publisher Wiley

Date 2012 Jul 21

PMID 22815254

Citations 51

Authors

Tomer Shechner

Johanna M Jarcho

Jennifer C Britton

Ellen Leibenluft

Daniel S Pine

Eric E Nelson

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Previous studies demonstrate that anxiety is characterized by biased attention toward threats, typically measured by differences in motor reaction time to threat and neutral cues. Using eye-tracking methodology, the current study measured attention biases in anxious and nonanxious youth, using unrestricted free viewing of angry, happy, and neutral faces.

Methods: Eighteen anxious and 15 nonanxious youth (8-17 years old) passively viewed angry-neutral and happy-neutral face pairs for 10 s while their eye movements were recorded.

Results: Anxious youth displayed a greater attention bias toward angry faces than nonanxious youth, and this bias occurred in the earliest phases of stimulus presentation. Specifically, anxious youth were more likely to direct their first fixation to angry faces, and they made faster fixations to angry than neutral faces.

Conclusions: Consistent with findings from earlier, reaction-time studies, the current study shows that anxious youth, like anxious adults, exhibit biased orienting to threat-related stimuli. This study adds to the existing literature by documenting that threat biases in eye-tracking patterns are manifest at initial attention orienting.

Citing Articles

Eye-tracking measurement of attention bias to social threat among youth: A replication and extension study.

Byrne M, Kirschner S, Harrewijn A, Abend R, Lazarov A, Liuzzi L J Mood Anxiety Disord. 2024; 8.

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Pre-scan state anxiety is associated with greater right amygdala-hippocampal response to fearful versus happy faces among trait-anxious Latina girls.

Diaz D, Tseng W, Michalska K BMC Psychiatry. 2024; 24(1):1.

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Social threat processing in adults and children: Faster orienting to, but shorter dwell time on, angry faces during visual search.

Plate R, Powell T, Bedford R, Smith T, Bamezai A, Wedderburn Q Dev Sci. 2023; 27(3):e13461.

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Behavioral and neurocognitive factors distinguishing post-traumatic stress comorbidity in substance use disorders.

Houghton D, Spratt H, Keyser-Marcus L, Bjork J, Neigh G, Cunningham K Transl Psychiatry. 2023; 13(1):296.

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Attention Bias and Anxiety: The Moderating Effect of Sociocultural Variables in Rural Latinx Youth.

Bocanegra E, Chang S, Rozenman M, Lee S, Delgadillo D, Chavira D Community Ment Health J. 2023; 59(8):1465-1478.

PMID: 37148436 PMC: 10598104. DOI: 10.1007/s10597-023-01132-y.

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