Difficulty in disengaging attention from threatening facial expressions in anxiety: A new approach in terms of benefits

Leleu, Vincent; Douilliez, Céline; Rusinek, Stéphane

doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2013.10.007

Cited by 58 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Infants' biased processing of faces that signal threat is advantageous for their survival at this period as they start to increasingly move away from the parent with the onset of crawling and walking (Campos et al, 2000;Clearfield, 2011). However, in cases where it is preserved over time, this bias towards threat in infants' attention may lay the foundation for later maladaptive developmental pathways (Field & Lester, 2010;Leleu, Douilliez, & Rusinek, 2014;Morales, Fu, & Pérez-Edgar, 2016).…”

Section: Attention Biases To Threat In Typical Development and Psychomentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental negative emotions are related to behavioral and pupillary correlates of infants’ attention to facial expressions of emotion

Aktar

Mandell

Vente

et al. 2018

Infant Behavior and Development

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Previous evidence revealed links between maternal negative emotions and infants' attention to facial expressions of emotion in clinical and community samples. This study investigated the associations between infants' attention to emotional faces and infants' and parents' negative emotions in a community sample. Infants' (N = 57, M = 14.26 months) fixations and pupil responses to fearful, sad, angry versus happy and neutral faces were measured with an eye-tracker. Mothers' and fathers' negative emotions (negative affect, depression, and anxiety), and infants' negative temperament were measured with questionnaires. Infants looked longer at fearful than happy or neutral faces, while they showed less pupil dilation to fearful than to happy or neutral faces. Higher levels of maternal negative emotions were related to less pupillary arousal to emotional facial expressions in infants, while paternal negative emotions did not predict infants' pupil responses. Exploratory analyses suggested a significant link between paternal but not maternal negative emotions and infants' fixations that was moderated by infant negative temperament: Higher levels of negative emotions in fathers were related to longer fixations in children with high levels of negative temperament, while it was related to shorter fixations in infants with low levels of negative temperament. The findings provide support for the idea that exposure to mothers' and fathers' negative emotions play a role on the development of infants' attention to facial expressions in typical development.

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Section: Attention Biases To Threat In Typical Development and Psychomentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental negative emotions are related to behavioral and pupillary correlates of infants’ attention to facial expressions of emotion

Aktar

Mandell

Vente

et al. 2018

Infant Behavior and Development

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“…Young adults with higher trait anxiety demonstrate difficulty disengaging from both angry and fearful faces (Leleu, Douilliez, & Rusinek, 2014). Furthermore, state, trait, and induced anxiety in nonclinical samples appears to modulate effects of approach-avoidance motivation for angry faces; elevated anxiety predicts poor inhibitory control for angry compared to happy or neutral faces, and delayed disengagement from angry faces (Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002; Pacheco-Unguetti, Acosta, Lupiáñez, Román, & Derakshan, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Emotional contrast and psychological function impact response inhibition to threatening faces

Greif

Waring

2018

Motiv Emot

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Poor inhibitory control over negative emotional information has been identified as a possible contributor to affective disorders, but the distinct effects of emotional contrast and fearful versus angry faces on response inhibition remain unknown. In the present study, young adults completed an emotional go/no-go task involving happy, neutral, and either fearful or angry faces. Results did not reveal differences in accuracy or speed between angry and fearful face conditions. However, responses were slower and indicated poorer inhibition in blocks where threatening faces were paired with happy, versus neutral, faces. Results may reflect cognitive load of emotional valence contrast, such that higher contrast blocks (containing threatening with happy faces) produced more conflict and required more processing than lower contrast blocks (threatening with neutral faces). Preliminary findings also revealed higher anxiety and depression symptoms corresponded with slower responses and worse accuracy, consistent with patterns of adverse impacts of anxiety and depression on response inhibition to threatening faces, even at subclinical levels of symptomatology.

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“…For the word-version of the dot-probe task, stimuli consisted of 12 threatening-neutral pairs selected from the threatening-neutral word-pairs database developed by Leleu, Douilliez, and Rusinek (2014). Words of each pair were matched on length and frequency in French.…”

Section: Measure Of Abmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the temporal stability of preexistent attentional bias for threat on its alteration through attention bias modification

Heeren

Philippot

Koster

2015

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry

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Background: Attention bias modification (ABM) aims to reduce attentional bias for threat (AB), thereby diminishing anxiety symptoms. However, recent metaanalyses indicated mixed effects. Recent works suggest that the presence of AB prior to ABM can be considered as a critical moderating factor that may account for these mixed results. Methods: We assessed AB among highly trait-anxious individuals (n = 77) using both a face-version and a word-version of the dot-probe task at multiple time points: two weeks before ABM (t1), just prior to ABM (t2), and after ABM (t3). All participants were submitted to an ABM procedure including facial expressions. Analyses focused on 2 components of AB prior to ABM: a stable component, representing variance shared between the two baseline points (t1 and t2), and a dynamic component, representing variance that is specific to that point (t1 or t2). Results: The stable component of AB at baseline predicted the intensity of AB after ABM (t3) b s t r a c tBackground: Attention bias modification (ABM) aims to reduce attentional bias for threat (AB), thereby diminishing anxiety symptoms. However, recent meta-analyses indicated mixed effects. Recent works suggest that the presence of AB prior to ABM can be considered as a critical moderating factor that may account for these mixed results. Methods:We assessed AB among highly trait-anxious individuals (n ¼ 77) using both a face-version and a word-version of the dot-probe task at multiple time points: two weeks before ABM (t 1 ), just prior to ABM (t 2 ), and after ABM (t 3 ). All participants were submitted to an ABM procedure including facial expressions. Analyses focused on 2 components of AB prior to ABM: a stable component, representing variance shared between the two baseline points (t 1 and t 2) , and a dynamic component, representing variance that is specific to that point (t 1 or t 2 ).Results: The stable component of AB at baseline predicted the intensity of AB after ABM (t 3 ) while the dynamic component did not. The dynamic component of AB at baseline positively predicts performance improvement during ABM procedure, while the stable component negatively predicted it. Limitations: The findings depicted above only appear with the face-version of the dot-probe task. Conclusions:The present results highlight the contribution of both the stable individual differences and dynamic components of preexistent AB. They also show the importance of moving the conceptualization of AB beyond the group-based analysis by integrating the notion and the assessment of within-person variability.

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Difficulty in disengaging attention from threatening facial expressions in anxiety: A new approach in terms of benefits

Cited by 58 publications

References 26 publications

Parental negative emotions are related to behavioral and pupillary correlates of infants’ attention to facial expressions of emotion

Parental negative emotions are related to behavioral and pupillary correlates of infants’ attention to facial expressions of emotion

Emotional contrast and psychological function impact response inhibition to threatening faces

Impact of the temporal stability of preexistent attentional bias for threat on its alteration through attention bias modification

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