Using Eye Tracking Methodology in Children with Anxiety Disorders

Biased attention to threat and anxiety: On taking a developmental approach

“…In line with Posner's model, the dot-probe task taps into the central processing demands of the participants' attention system, measuring reaction time to a probe immediately after the presentation of salient information. Recent dot-probe studies with younger, pediatric populations typically modify stimulus presentation of the standard adult task (e.g., time on screen) to match the participants' processing needs (Garner, 2010;In-Albon & Schneider, 2010). The newer infant version of the task is virtually identical to the classic version; however, instead of requiring a button press to indicate on which side the probe appears, we simply measure latency to fixate the probe.…”

Attention to threat in posttraumatic stress disorder as indexed by eye-tracking indices: a systematic review

“…In addition, due to their "snapshot" nature, RT-based tasks are limited in their ability to differentiate the different aspects of attention, especially within single trials, and to accurately describe the dynamic and ongoing process of attention as it unfolds and changes over time Lee, 2012, Thomas et al, 2013). Indeed, it has been suggested that the Stroop effect may index difficulty in threat-disengagement, or even avoidance of processing aversive information, rather than vigilance or attention toward threat (De Ruiter and Brosschot, 1994, Fox, 1994, 2004, Hermans et al, 1999, In-Albon and Schneider, 2010, Mogg and Bradley, 2004, Thomas et al, 2013, Tolin et al, 1999, with similar claims raised also for the dot-probe task (Bar-Haim et al, 2007, Felmingham et al, 2011, Fox et al, 2001, Weierich et al, 2008. Consequently, it remains less clear which attentional mechanisms are driving observed results on these tasks, which is crucial in providing valuable insights into the maintenance of symptoms and in clarifying novel specific targets for therapeutic intervention (Armstrong et al, 2013).…”

“…To date, research examining threat-related attentional biases in PTSD has relied mostly on reaction-time (RT)-based tasks and measures (In-Albon and Schneider, 2010), in which attention bias to threat is inferred from facilitated or interfered performance (i.e., changes in RT) due to presence of threatening stimuli. For example, in the emotional Stroop task (Williams et al, 1996), threatening and non-threatening words are paired along with a color (the word or its background), and participants are asked to name that color while ignoring its semantic meaning.…”

“…However, as RT-based measures of attention are derived from keypresses occurring at the end of the information processing course they inevitably involve an inherent temporal distance between the behavioral output (i.e., key presses) and the examined attentional components taking place earlier in the process. Thus, attentional processes are only measured indirectly, inferred from facilitated or interfered performance measured at the end of the process (Kimble et al, 2010, Lee and Lee, 2012, Thomas et al, 2013, providing no information about the course of attention deployment before or after the moment of measurement (Armstrong and Olatunji, 2012, Bar-Haim, 2010, Bar-Haim et al, 2007, Felmingham et al, 2011, Hermans et al, 1999, In-Albon and Schneider, 2010, Lazarov et al, 2016, Lazarov et al, 2017b, Price et al, 2016, Shechner et al, 2013, Thomas et al, 2013, Yiend, 2010. In addition, due to their "snapshot" nature, RT-based tasks are limited in their ability to differentiate the different aspects of attention, especially within single trials, and to accurately describe the dynamic and ongoing process of attention as it unfolds and changes over time Lee, 2012, Thomas et al, 2013).…”

“…Two additional disadvantages of RT-based tasks further highlight the need to find new and improved paradigms capable of assessing, and subsequently modifying, threat-related attentional biases. First, RT-based tasks suffer from poor psychometric properties including low internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as poor convergent and ecological validity (In-Albon andSchneider, 2010, Rodebaugh et al, 2016). Low test-retest reliability and minimal convergent validity were found for the Stroop (Eide et al, 2002, Strauss et al, 2005 and for the dot-probe tasks (Schmukle, 2005, Staugaard, 2009, Waechter et al, 2014, Waechter and Stolz, 2015.…”