Attentional processing of emotional material in types of anxiety and depression

ABSTRACT

The present study was designed to address the hypothesis that differences and similarities in patterns of attentional processing in recently proposed types of anxiety and depression are connected with the dominant (reactive, regulative) function they play in stimulation processing and their structural components. Participants (N = 1247) filled out the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire, which assesses types of anxiety and depression, and completed the Emotional Faces Attentional Test one week later. The obtained results confirmed our prediction and suggested that the proposed typology of anxiety and depression is valid in the adaptive meanings of both phenomena.

KEYWORDS:

• Attentional processing
• anxiety types
• depression types

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Centre, Poland [grant number 2012/07/E/HS6/04071].