Fear not! Anxiety biases attentional enhancement of threat without impairing working memory filtering

Salahub, Christine; Emrich, Stephen M.

doi:10.3758/s13415-020-00831-3

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Future research may examine the relationship between worry and attentional bias to uncontrollable threats vs controllable threats that can either be avoided or escaped, as avoidance and escape behaviours may contribute to different worry [ 70 ]. In addition, future research may examine the current hypothesis using measures of attentional bias that are time sensitive, such as event-related potentials [ 71 , 72 ], as differences in one’s ability to divert attention away from threat may also contribute to individual differences in the experience of worry.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between worry and attentional bias to threat cues signalling controllable and uncontrollable dangers

et al. 2021

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People vary in the frequency with which they worry and there is large variation in the degree to which this worry disrupts their everyday functioning. Heightened tendency to experience disruptive worry is characterised by an attentional bias towards threat. While this attentional bias is often considered maladaptive, it can be adaptive when it concerns threat cues signalling dangers that can be mitigated through personal action. In this case, the resulting worry may increase the likelihood of this action being taken, with beneficial rather than disruptive consequences for everyday functioning. Thus, depending on its focus, attentional bias to threat could potentially drive worry that is high or low in disruptiveness. The current study addressed this possibility, by testing the novel hypothesis that the degree to which worry is disruptive is a function of the degree to which this attentional bias concerns all threat cues, rather than being restricted to threat cues signalling controllable dangers. Participants completed a novel probe task assessing their attention to threat cues signalling a future danger that could be controlled on some blocks, but not on others. Thus, the task revealed the degree to which their selective attention to threat cues was ‘aligned’ with danger controllability, by being more evident on blocks that permitted participant control of the danger signalled by the threat cues. The results indicate, contradicting the hypothesis under test, participants who reported high levels of disruptive worry demonstrated alignment of attentional bias to variations in danger controllability, whereas this was not the case for participants who reported high levels of non-disruptive worry. While caution is needed in the interpretation of the results due to methodological limitations, this study provides a new conceptual and methodological framework for future research on the attentional basis of individual differences in the tendency to experience disruptive vs non-disruptive worry.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between worry and attentional bias to threat cues signalling controllable and uncontrollable dangers

et al. 2021

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“…As depicted in Fig 1, a memory template consisting of an angry or neutral face oval was initially presented lateral to a fixation point. The position opposite the face oval contained a scrambled version of the face oval, balancing the visual display [26]. This was followed by a visual search array consisting of six faces (target and five other neutral faces, 3 male and 3 female faces, identities and gender randomly allocated in the display).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such a template helps to manage the overwhelming amount of information available in the environment by providing top-down guidance of attention allocation to memory-matching, task-relevant stimuli [25]. WM guidance of perception can become disadvantageous when cognitive resources are allocated toward threatening stimuli as distractors [26] matching WM templates [27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working memory guidance of visual attention to threat in offenders

2022

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Aggression and trait anger have been linked to attentional biases toward angry faces and attribution of hostile intent in ambiguous social situations. Memory and emotion play a crucial role in social-cognitive models of aggression but their mechanisms of influence are not fully understood. Combining a memory task and a visual search task, this study investigated the guidance of attention allocation toward naturalistic face targets during visual search by visual working memory (WM) templates in 113 participants who self-reported having served a custodial sentence. Searches were faster when angry faces were held in working memory regardless of the emotional valence of the visual search target. Higher aggression and trait anger predicted increased working memory modulated attentional bias. These results are consistent with the Social-Information Processing model, demonstrating that internal representations bias attention allocation to threat and that the bias is linked to aggression and trait anger.

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“…On the basis of prior studies in our laboratory, we measured the N2pc as the mean amplitude between 200 and 300 msec after search array onset (Salahub & Emrich, 2020;Salahub, Lockhart, Dube, Al-Aidroos, & Emrich, 2019). If suppression occurs before attentional selection, then we would predict an early P D to the lateral distractor before the N2pc (100-200 msec; similar to Sawaki & Luck, 2010).…”

Section: Eeg Recording and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Drawn to Distraction: Anxiety Impairs Neural Suppression of Known Distractor Features in Visual Search

Salahub

Emrich

2021

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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When searching for a target, it is possible to suppress the features of a known distractor. This suppression may prevent distractor processing altogether or only after the distractor initially captures attention (i.e., search and destroy). However, suppression may be impaired in individuals with attentional control deficits, such as in high anxiety. In this study (n = 48), we used ERPs to examine the time course of attentional enhancement and suppression when participants were given pretrial information about target or distractor features. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that individuals with higher levels of anxiety had lower neural measures of suppressing the template-matching distractor, instead showing enhanced processing. These findings indicate that individuals with anxiety are more likely to use a search-and-destroy mechanism of negative templates—highlighting the importance of attentional control abilities in distractor-guided search.

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Fear not! Anxiety biases attentional enhancement of threat without impairing working memory filtering

Cited by 13 publications

References 77 publications

The relationship between worry and attentional bias to threat cues signalling controllable and uncontrollable dangers

The relationship between worry and attentional bias to threat cues signalling controllable and uncontrollable dangers

Working memory guidance of visual attention to threat in offenders

Drawn to Distraction: Anxiety Impairs Neural Suppression of Known Distractor Features in Visual Search

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