Attentional Bias for Cues Signaling Punishment and Reward in Adolescents: Cross-Sectional and Prognostic Associations with Symptoms of Anxiety and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Heightened reward sensitivity has been proposed as a risk factor for developing behavioral disorders whereas heightened punishment sensitivity has been related to the development of anxiety disorders in youth. Combining a cross-sectional ( n = 696, mean age = 16.14) and prospective ( n = 598, mean age = 20.20) approach, this study tested the hypotheses that an attentional bias for punishing cues is involved in the development of anxiety disorders and an attentional bias for rewarding cues in the development of behavioral disorders. A spatial orientation task was used to examine the relation between an attentional bias for punishing cues and an attentional bias for rewarding cues with anxiety and behavioral problems in a subsample of a large prospective population cohort study. Our study indicates that attentional biases to general cues of punishment and reward do not seem to be important risk factors for the development of anxiety or behavioral problems respectively. It might be that attentional biases play a role in the maintenance of psychological problems. This remains open for future research. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10802-020-00654-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Behavioral problems in anxious youth: Cross-sectional and prospective associations with reinforcement sensitivity and parental rejection

“…In line with [ 33 ] and [ 52 ], the proneness to attend to rewarding/punishing cues was indexed by the cue validity effect for cues signaling reward/punishment. The difference in reaction time between the cued and uncued location represents the cue validity effect.…”

“…In order to take individual differences in reaction times into account when calculating the cue validity effects, we subtracted the individual’s mean reaction time on the practice trials on either cued or uncued trials from the corresponding mean scores. This subtraction reduces the correlation between the components (reaction time of cued trials and reaction time of uncued trials) of the cue validity effects and thereby improves the reliability of attentional proneness measures [ 33 ]. See Table 2 for the calculations of the cue validity effects and the reliability estimates.…”

“…Therefore, in the current study we not only took a cross-sectional approach, but also looked at prospective associations while using a behavioural procedure (Spatial Orientation Task, [ 32 ]) to assess punishment and reward sensitivity. In the entire focus group ( Ncross-sectional = 696, Nlongitudinal = 598) ) of the TRAILS cohort, we failed to find meaningful cross-sectional and prospective associations between punishment sensitivity (as indexed with the SOT) and anxiety symptoms and between reward sensitivity (as indexed with the SOT) and behavioral problems in CYP [ 33 ]. The non-significant association between reward sensitivity and behavioral problems in this entire focus group may be explained by previous research that found that for non-clinical CYP, reward sensitivity may be actually associated with positive social and environmental functioning [ 28 ].…”

Value-Modulated Attentional Capture in Reward and Punishment Contexts, Attentional Control, and their Relationship with Psychopathology

“…Other studies using the spatial orienting task have found no evidence for cross-sectional or ATTENTIONAL CAPTURE -REWARD AND PUNISHMENT 6 temporal associations between attentional bias for cues signaling reward or punishment and anxiety or behavioral problems (Kreuze et al, 2020(Kreuze et al, , 2022.…”

Value-modulated attentional capture in reward and punishment contexts, attentional control, and their relationship with psychopathology

“…Similarly, this hypersensitivity to punishment has been linked to anxiety disorders (Bar-Haim et al, 2007). Other studies using the spatial orienting task have found no evidence for cross-sectional or temporal associations between attentional bias for cues signaling reward or punishment and anxiety or behavioral problems (Kreuze et al, 2020(Kreuze et al, , 2022.…”