Influence of worry on sustained attention to emotional stimuli: Evidence from the late positive potential

Abstract

There is preliminary evidence to suggest that worry is associated with dysregulated emotion processing resulting from sustained attention to emotional versus neutral stimuli; however, this hypothesis has not been directly tested in prior research. Therefore, the current study used the event-related late positive potential (LPP) to directly examine if high levels of trait worry moderate sustained attention to emotional versus neutral stimuli. Electroencephalogram data was recorded while twenty-two women passively viewed neutral, positive, dysphoric and threatening emotional images. Consistent with our hypotheses, higher levels of worry were associated with larger LPP amplitudes for emotional images but not neutral images. Importantly, the positive correlations between trait worry and LPP responses to threatening and positive images were maintained even when controlling for the influence of current anxiety symptoms, suggesting that worry may influence emotion processing whether or not the person is currently anxious. This sustained attention to emotional information may be one mechanism underlying how trait worry increases risk for anxiety disorders.

Childhood maltreatment is associated with increased neural response to ambiguous threatening facial expressions in adulthood: Evidence from the late positive potential

“…Rather, this increased attention to threat may constitute a latent vulnerability factor for future symptoms (McCrory & Viding, 2015;McCrory, Gerin, & Viding, 2017). Consistent with this, hypersensitivity to threat can increase negative affect in response to stressors (Eldar, Ricon, & Bar-Haim, 2008;MacLeod, Rutherford, Campbell, Ebsworthy, & Holker, 2002), and may play a role in the maladaptive coping strategies that characterize affective disorders (e.g., worry and rumination; Burkhouse, Woody, Owens, & Gibb, 2015;Siegle, Steinhauer, Thase, Stenger, & Carter, 2002). Furthermore, evidence suggests that the magnitude of the LPP may be a useful endophenotype for internalizing disorders, indicating that enhanced neural responses to threat may reflect increased risk for first onset or recurrence of symptoms (Kujawa et al, 2016;Speed, Nelson, Auerbach, Fig.…”

Protracted amygdalar response predicts efficacy of a computer-based intervention targeting attentional patterns in transdiagnostic clinical anxiety

“…For example, Siegle and colleagues found that patients who exhibited greater sustained amygdalar responses in the aftermath of negative stimuli displayed greater improvement following cognitive-behavioral therapy 19 . Because amygdalar response to emotionally salient stimuli is thought to be a transdiagnostic marker of internalizing disorders 20,21 and prominent clinical phenotypes of anxiety involve protracted forms of attention (e.g., worry) 22,23 , it is possible that sustained amygdalar response in the aftermath of emotional stimuli could also be utilized to predict the effectiveness of interventions for anxiety, such as ABM.…”

The Effects of Worry in Daily Life: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study Supporting the Tenets of the Contrast Avoidance Model

“…At the same time, those with GAD (vs. controls) were more likely to report that worry created and sustained negative emotion (Llera & Newman, 2017). Trait worry was also associated with sustained hypervigilance to threatening stimuli at a neural level (Burkhouse, Woody, Owens, & Gibb, 2015).…”