Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2002 Vol 111 No 2 225 236 Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association Inc 0021 843X 02 5 00 DOI 10 1037 0021 843X 111 2 225 Anxiety Related Attentional Biases and Their Regulation by Attentional Control Douglas Derryberry and Marjorie A Reed Oregon State University This study examined the role of self reported attentional control in regulating attentional biases related to trait anxiety Simple detection targets were preceded by cues labeling potential target locations as threatening likely to result in negative feedback or safe likely to result in positive feedback Trait anxious participants showed an early attentional bias favoring the threatening location 250 ms after the cue and a late bias favoring the safe location 500 ms after the cue The anxiety related threat bias was moderated by attentional control at the 500 ms delay Anxious participants with poor attentional control still showed the threat bias whereas those with good control were better able to shift from the threatening location Thus skilled control of voluntary attention may allow anxious persons to limit the impact of threatening information One of the most promising findings of recent years concerns anxious persons attentional biases favoring threatening information Such biases are important in that attention selectively facilitates the early processing of threat thereby influencing subsequent cognitive and emotional processes related to anxiety Mathews 1990 Wells Matthews 1994 Williams Mathews MacLeod 1996 In addition attention contributes to many forms of learning and may shape developing cognitive representations from the earliest years Derryberry Reed 1996 Thus attentional biases appear central to both processing and structural aspects of the anxious personality Most research has emphasized the relatively automatic ways in which attention amplifies threat and exacerbates anxiety However more voluntary attention is also recruited in the coping strategies that people use to regulate their anxiety What is needed is a better understanding of the ways in which these automatic and strategic processes work together as the person attempts to cope In the present article we approach this goal by viewing anxiety in relation to separate attentional systems involved in relatively automatic orienting and voluntary control processes We propose that individuals differ not only in anxiety but also in their capacity to use voluntary attention to control orienting Such an approach affords a distinction between anxious people who are more or less skilled in using voluntary attention in their efforts to cope This distinction provides a useful perspective on the interplay between automatic and strategic processes and consequent individual differences in anxiety and coping Biased Attention in Anxiety The two most common paradigms used to study anxiety and attention are the emotional Stroop and the dot probe tasks In the Stroop task participants are asked to name the color of a word If the word is threatening anxious persons are relatively slow to name its color Such delays are generally thought to reflect enhanced attention to the threatening word leading to distraction from the color naming task e g Williams et al 1996 In the dot probe paradigm a threatening word and a neutral word are simultaneously presented on the screen followed after 500 ms by a target dot in one of the word s locations Anxious individuals are relatively fast to detect the target when it appears in the threatening word s location presumably because their attention has been drawn to the threatening word MacLeod Mathews 1988 Wells Matthews 1994 Findings with the Stroop and dot probe tasks converge in several ways For example both tasks have identified consistent and specific biases in clinical groups but less consistent biases in nonclinically trait anxious people Sartory 1998 In addition both tasks can be modeled in terms of processing along task relevant and task irrelevant pathways with the effects arising because anxious participants allocate attention to irrelevant pathways that convey threat Williams et al 1996 Furthermore both tasks suggest that the attentional distraction is relatively automatic in that it is difficult to control and can even be elicited by subliminal words Bradley Mogg Millar White 1995 Mogg Bradley Williams 1995 A third paradigm used to study attention and anxiety is a spatial orienting task Derryberry Reed 1993 1997 This paradigm differs from the Stroop and dot probe paradigms in that it uses threatening stimuli that are relevant rather than irrelevant to the task and thus allows more room for strategic or voluntary processes Participants are engaged in a motivated game where they can gain or lose points depending on their speed in detecting simple circular targets Before each target appears a peripheral cue is presented that orients attention to a positive location e g where points can be gained if the response is fast enough or negative location where points can be lost if the response is too slow In Douglas Derryberry and Marjorie A Reed Department of Psychology Oregon State University We thank Verna Nelson and Tao Zang for their help in running the experiment Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Douglas Derryberry or Marjorie A Reed Department of Psychology Oregon State University Corvallis Oregon 97331 E mail Dderryberry orst edu or Mreed orst edu 225 DERRYBERRY AND REED 226 line with results from the other tasks neurotic introverts and trait anxious participants show an attentional bias favoring threatening locations where points might be lost Derryberry Reed 1994a 1997 The bias appears when the target follows the cue by as little as 100 ms which is consistent with the notion that the bias reflects relatively rapid and automatic attentional shifts It is important to note that the bias only appears when a negative cue is followed by a target in another location This suggests a different view of the underlying attentional processes Rather than facilitating attentional shifts toward threatening stimuli anxiety delays the disengagement of attention from threat Such a view is compatible with both the Stroop and dot probe results Difficulty shifting from threatening information would slow color naming when the anxious individual has difficulty shifting from the irrelevant threatening meaning to the relevant color information In the dot probe task the bias favoring
View Full Document
Unlocking...