Introduction to the Special Issue: Understanding the Role of Attentional Control in the Development of Anxiety in Childhood, Adolescence and across the Lifespan

Abstract

Anxiety is characterised by a distinctive emotional, cognitive and behavioural symptomatology. The central emotional symptoms are fear and apprehension, often evoked by the occurrence or anticipation of specific types of situations; the primary cognitive symptoms are negative thoughts and worries concerning the uncertainties and potential threats associated with such situations; and the main behavioural symptom is avoidance or attempted avoidance of these situations (Grills, Seligman & Ollendick, 2014). People differ in terms of the degree to which they are inclined to experience anxiety, which reflects a temperamental dimension known as trait anxiety. Trait anxiety is defined as a general and stable predisposition to experience worries and concerns across different contexts, and its presence increases current and transient feelings of state anxiety in the context of or expectation of threat (Gidron, 2013). Higher levels of trait anxiety are associated with intolerance of uncertainty, which reflects a preference for certainty and increased engagement in behaviours linked to the management and avoidance of situations that are unpredictable or ambiguous (Birrell, Meares, Wilkinson & Freeston, 2011; Chen & Lovibond, 2016). Individual differences in the disposition to experience anxiety are evident from early childhood, when elevated anxiety vulnerability typically manifests as behavioural inhibition (BI). Children with high levels of BI display negative reactions to novelty, heightened sensitivity to stimulus variations and withdrawal from social situations, which can result in peer rejection and reduced assertiveness (Fox & Pine, 2012). Early manifestations of heightened dispositional anxiety predict an increased tendency to experience problematic levels of anxiety in adolescence (Fox, Henderson, Marshall, Nichols & Ghera, 2005). In addition, longitudinal evidence supports multifactorial models in which anxious rearing and parental trait anxiety play a major role in the development

Examining the Impact of Working Memory Training and Transcranial Direct-current Stimulation on Monitoring for Color Targets in Dynamic Visual Displays

“…This finding is consistent with the compensatory role of WM outlined by theoretical frameworks of anxiety and cognition (Derakshan Eysenck, 2009;Eysenck Derakshan, 2011;Eysenck et al, 2007), which suggest that the impact of anxiety on attentional control may be most evident in individuals with limited WM resources. The interaction between IU and WMC also fits with a broader pattern of results which highlight the importance of attentional control and WM in understanding the cognitive effects of anxiety and suggest a protective role for these factors that moderates the impact of elevated anxiety on cognitive processing (Booth, Mackintosh, Sharma, 2017;Hadwin, Visu-Petra, Muris, Derakshan, MacLeod, 2016;Matthew Owens, Stevenson, Hadwin, Norgate, 2014).…”

A Growth Mixture Modeling Study of Learning Trajectories in an Extended Computerized Working Memory Training Programme Developed for Young Children Diagnosed With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

“…Developmental research has highlighted that attentional control skills, including working memory (WM), are positively linked to several indices of adjustment in childhood and adolescence, such as emotion regulation (reviews by Hadwin et al, 2016;Moran, 2016). In addition, research has shown that performance in WM tasks in children and adolescents is positively associated with educational achievement in core subjects, including text comprehension and reading (e.g., Daneman and Carpenter, 1980;Perfetti, 1985;Baddeley, 1986) and mathematical problem solving (e.g., Bull and Scerif, 2001;Swanson and Beebe-Frankenberger, 2004).…”

Attentional Control and Fear Extinction in Subclinical Fear: An Exploratory Study

“…Several attentional and learning processes have been found to play a major role in pathological anxiety (i.e., anxiety disorders). Recent research suggests that attentional control (AC) and fear extinction learning feature prominently among such processes (e.g., Bar-Haim et al, 2007 ; Cisler and Koster, 2010 ; Eysenck and Derakshan, 2011 ; Milad and Quirk, 2012 ; Heeren et al, 2013 ; VanElzakker et al, 2014 ; Duits et al, 2015 ; Hadwin et al, 2016 ). In this study, we explore the possible association between these two processes.…”

“…Deficient AC has been found to characterize both clinical ( Olatunji et al, 2011 ) and subclinical anxiety (e.g., Fajkowska and Derryberry, 2010 ; Sportel et al, 2013 ). Such deficits may also account for the attention bias to threat commonly observed in anxious individuals ( Hadwin et al, 2016 ). Moreover, such deficits are associated with reduced ability to regulate emotion ( Fajkowska and Derryberry, 2010 ; Armstrong et al, 2011 ; Tortella-Feliu et al, 2014 ; Hsu et al, 2015 ; Morillas-Romero et al, 2015 ; O’Bryan et al, 2017 ).…”

“…The study by Waters and Kershaw (2015) belongs to the research tradition that focuses on analyzing how attentional bias to threat-related information is associated with increased anxiety (valence-specific models) (for a review see Heeren et al, 2013 ; Hadwin et al, 2016 ). Waters and Kershaw (2015) found that clinically anxious children who showed attention to threat in a visual probe task exhibited greater fear extinction learning than those who avoided threat.…”