Enhanced probing of attentional bias: The independence of anxiety-linked selectivity in attentional engagement with and disengagement from negative information

Abstract

Cognitive models of anxiety posit that an attentional bias to negative information plays a causal role in elevated anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction. There has been considerable recent interest in determining whether this attentional bias reflects facilitated attentional engagement with and/or impaired attentional disengagement from negative information. We concur with the claim of investigators who have noted that the methodologies previously employed to dissociate engagement and disengagement biases are not optimal for this purpose. In the present study, we employ a novel methodology, the Attentional Response to Distal vs. Proximal Emotional Information (ARDPEI) task, which enables the discrete assessment of these two types of attentional selectivity. The findings demonstrate that facilitated attentional engagement with and impaired attentional disengagement from negative information both characterise elevated anxiety vulnerability. Further, these biases represent distinctive facets of anxiety-linked attentional selectivity. We discuss the potentially differing roles that engagement and disengagement biases may play in the development and/or maintenance of anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• Attentional bias
• Engagement
• Disengagement
• Dot-probe task
• Emotional spatial cuing task

This work was supported by Australian Research Council Grant [DP14010448], and by a grant from the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS–UEFISCDI, project number PNII-ID-PCCE-2011-2-0045.

This work was supported by Australian Research Council Grant [DP14010448], and by a grant from the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS–UEFISCDI, project number PNII-ID-PCCE-2011-2-0045.

Notes

¹ The abstract images were obtained via a Google Image Search for open source images using the search term “abstract art”. These images were rated using the same procedure as was originally employed for the IAPS images. The mean emotional valence rating of the abstract images was 4.77 (SD = .23). The full set of abstract images, and their ratings, can be downloaded from http://www.psychology.uwa.edu.au/research/care/downloads/ARDPEIabstractimages

² Accuracy rates did not differ as a function of representational image valence, F(1, 45) = .40, p = .53, exposure duration, F(1, 45) = .1.90, p = .17, anchor probe locus, F(1, 45) = .14, p = .71, or target probe locus, F(1, 45) = 1.63, p = .21.

³ Accuracy rates did not differ as a function of representational image valence, F(1, 45) = .98, p = .33, exposure duration, F(1, 45) = .19, p = .67, or target probe locus, F(1, 45) = 1.73, p = .20.