The effect of trait anxiety and mood manipulation on the breadth of attention

Keogh, Edmund; French, Christopher C.

doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-0984(199905/06)13:3<209::aid-per346>3.0.co;2-n

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We observed exactly the opposite. The results are consistent with other work on attentional processes (Keogh & French, 1999) and political reasoning (MacKuen et al, 2001;Marcus et al, 1995) showing that anxious participants actually show an increase in the range of information that they process, compared to nonanxious participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions: The influence of contextual cues

Blanchette

Richards

Cross

2007

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In 3 experiments, we investigate how anxiety influences interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions of emotion. Specifically, we examine whether anxiety modulates the effect of contextual cues on interpretation. Participants saw ambiguous facial expressions. Simultaneously, positive or negative contextual information appeared on the screen. Participants judged whether each expression was positive or negative. We examined the impact of verbal and visual contextual cues on participants' judgements. We used 3 different anxiety induction procedures and measured levels of trait anxiety (Experiment 2). Results showed that high state anxiety resulted in greater use of contextual information in the interpretation of the facial expressions. Trait anxiety was associated with mood-congruent effects on interpretation, but not greater use of contextual information.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions: The influence of contextual cues

Blanchette

Richards

Cross

2007

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Enhanced detection of threat-related stimuli, such as human faces depicting fear, has been uniquely associated with elevated anxiety [Fox et al, 2001;Gasper and Clore, 2002;Keogh and French, 1999;Yiend and Mathews, 2001]. As shown in a recent meta-analysis, however, these effects are somewhat modest [Bar-Haim et al, 2007].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threat-related attentional biases: an analysis of three attention systems

2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is unclear how threat-related attentional biases affect multiple attention systems. This study used a new modification of a reaction time paradigm to examine whether inter-trial task-irrelevant fearful faces influenced the efficiency of alerting, orienting, and executive attention, and whether effects varied with level of state anxiety. Participants, 63 non-disordered adults (17 males and 46 females), reported on their subjective state anxiety and completed a modified version of the Attention Network Test in which fearful or neutral faces or control stimuli were presented briefly (50 ms) between trials of the task, but provided no task-relevant information. Across all participants, state anxiety was positively correlated with alerting, whereas fearful versus neutral faces were linked to decreased alerting efficiency. Contrasting high and low anxiety groups showed that fearful versus neutral faces reduced executive attention in the low state anxiety group only, suggesting decreased distraction by irrelevant stimuli in the high state anxiety group. Results document threat-related attentional biases that varied with attention system but failed to find enhanced bias effects among those with higher state anxiety in a typical range. This modification of the Attention Network Test, which added presentation of emotional distracters, provides a potentially useful new method for assessing the impact of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli on three aspects of attention performance.

show abstract

“…Mood congruence may amplify such attentional biases (Gilboa-Schechtman, Revelle, & Gotlib, 2000; Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996); namely negative emotional information that is congruent with a specific negative mood increases attentional interference effects (Easterbrook, 1959; Hanoch & Vitouch, 2004; Leith & Baumeister, 1996; Meinhardt & Pekrun, 2003), particularly when the emotional information distracts from the target attention task (Compton, 2003). In particular, mood induction of fear and anxiety has been associated with reduced orienting and executive attention performance following fear-related stimuli (Keogh & French, 1999; Mogg, Mathews, & Eysenck, 1992). Similar mood-congruent patterns have been reported in relation to depressed mood (Gilboa-Schechtman et al, 2000; Joormann, Talbot, & Gotlib, 2007; Ladouceur et al, 2005; Whitehouse, Turanski, & Murray, 2000) and anxiety (Eastwood, Smilek, & Merikle, 2003; Fenske & Eastwood, 2003; Fox et al, 2001; Mogg et al, 1992; Schupp, Junghöfer, Weike, & Hamm, 2003).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontal EEG and emotion regulation: Electrocortical activity in response to emotional film clips is associated with reduced mood induction and attention interference effects

Dennis

Solomon

2010

Biological Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Frontal EEG activity is thought to reflect affective dispositions, but may also reflect the emotional demands of a specific context combined with the capability to regulate emotions in that context. The present study examined this hypothesis by testing whether frontal EEG activity during mood inductions versus a resting baseline predicted emotion regulation. EEG was recorded while participants (N = 66, 40 females) received a fearful, sad, or neutral mood induction. Emotion regulation was measured following the mood inductions as self-reported change in negative mood and as attention interference in a task with mood-congruent emotional distracters. Greater frontal EEG activity during the mood inductions versus baseline was associated with more effective emotion regulation: less post-induction sadness and anxiety and reduced mood-congruent attention interference effects. Effects did not differ between the left and right hemispheres. Results support the hypothesis that frontal EEG activity reflects both emotional context and emotion-regulatory capabilities. Keywords EEG; emotion regulationGreater left frontal EEG activity measured during resting conditions has been associated with a disposition for behavioral approach and the expression of approach-related emotions such as happiness and anger, whereas relatively greater resting right frontal EEG activity has been associated with a disposition for behavioral withdrawal and the expression of avoidance-related emotions such as sadness, fear, and anxiety (e.g., Coan & Allen, 2004;Harmon-Jones & Allen, 1998;Hugdahl & Davidson, 2003;Schmidt & Fox, 1998). Such findings have been used to support the dispositional view of frontal EEG, and are consistent with research on traumatic brain injury due to stroke showing that damage to the left frontal cortex compromises the ability to down-regulate negative emotion (House, Dennis, Molyneux, Warlow, & Hawton, 1989;Watson et al., 1995), although a meta-analysis of lesion studies failed to support this hypothesis (Carson et al., 2000).Complementing this dispositional view, the capability model of frontal EEG asymmetry suggests that while EEG activity may reflect such general affective dispositions, individual © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptBiol Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 December 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript differences in frontal EEG may more accurately be thought of as emerging from the interaction between the emotional...

show abstract

The effect of trait anxiety and mood manipulation on the breadth of attention

Cited by 20 publications

References 20 publications

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions: The influence of contextual cues

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions: The influence of contextual cues

Threat-related attentional biases: an analysis of three attention systems

Frontal EEG and emotion regulation: Electrocortical activity in response to emotional film clips is associated with reduced mood induction and attention interference effects

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About