Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Bias Zvielli, Ariel; Bernstein, Amit; Koster, Ernst H. W.
Clinical psychological science,
09/2015, Letnik:
3, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Biases of emotional attention are believed to be central to human (mal)adaptation and multiple forms of psychopathology. Yet fundamental questions remain regarding the nature and empirical study of ...attentional bias (AB). We thus aimed to (a) test a novel conceptualization and related operationalization of AB expression in time and (b) illuminate the nature of AB and specifically its temporal expression. We examined AB expression in time by means of a novel trial-level bias score (TL-BS) analysis of dot probe task data in two experiments—among spider phobics and healthy controls, and among smoking-deprived daily smokers. Findings revealed evidence of the dynamic expression of AB in time; furthermore, TL-BS parameters demonstrated unique associations with psychopathology and addiction beyond traditional bias score. The present research may help to bring the conceptualization and quantification of AB closer to the nature of the phenomenon and thereby advance basic and clinical knowledge.
The aim of the present study was to question untested assumptions about the nature of the expression of Attentional Bias (AB) towards and away from threat stimuli. We tested the idea that high trait ...anxious individuals (N = 106; M(SD)age = 23.9(3.2) years; 68% women) show a stable AB towards multiple categories of threatening information using the emotional visual dot probe task. AB with respect to five categories of threat stimuli (i.e., angry faces, attacking dogs, attacking snakes, pointed weapons, violent scenes) was evaluated. In contrast with current theories, we found that 34% of participants expressed AB towards threat stimuli, 20.8% AB away from threat stimuli, and 34% AB towards some categories of threat stimuli and away from others. The multiple observed expressions of AB were not an artifact of a specific criterion AB score cut-off; not specific to certain categories of threat stimuli; not an artifact of differences in within-subject variability in reaction time; nor accounted for by individual differences in anxiety-related variables. Findings are conceptualized as reflecting the understudied dynamics of AB expression, with implications for AB measurement and quantification, etiology, relations, and intervention research.
Objective: Threat-related attention bias figures prominently in contemporary accounts of the maintenance of anxiety disorders, yet longitudinal intervention research relating attention bias to ...anxiety symptom severity is limited. Capitalizing on recent advances in the conceptualization and measurement of attention bias, we aimed to examine the relation between attention bias, indexed using trial-level bias scores (TLBSs) to quantify temporal dynamics reflecting dysregulation of attentional processing of threat (as opposed to aggregated mean bias scores) and social anxiety symptom severity over the course of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and 1-month follow-up. Method: Adults with social anxiety disorder (N = 39) assigned to either yohimbine- or placebo-augmented CBT completed measures of attention bias and social anxiety symptom severity weekly throughout CBT (5 sessions) and at 1-week and 1-month posttreatment. Results: TLBSs of attention bias temporal dynamics showed stronger psychometric properties than mean aggregated scores and were highly interrelated, in line with within-subject temporal variability fluctuating in time between attentional overengagement and strategic avoidance from threat. Attention bias toward threat and temporal variability in attention bias (i.e., attentional dysregulation), but not attention bias away from threat, significantly reduced over the course of CBT. Cross-lag analyses revealed no evidence of a causal relation between reductions in attentional dysregulation leading to symptom severity reduction, or vice versa. Observed relations did not vary as a function of time. Conclusions: We found no evidence for attentional dysregulation as a causal mechanism for symptom reduction in CBT for social anxiety disorders. Implications for future research are discussed.
What is the public health significance of this article?
This study suggests that attentional dysregulation may not be a mechanism for change in cognitive-behavioral therapy, an effective treatment for social anxiety disorder. Though data are still preliminary, our finding that cognitive-behavioral therapy did not lead to changes in attentional avoidance leaves open the possibility that targeting attentional avoidance alongside cognitive-behavioral therapy may enhance its efficacy.
We present an experimental investigation of a novel intervention paradigm targeting attentional bias – Attention Feedback Awareness and Control Training (A-FACT). A-FACT is grounded in the novel ...hypothesis that training awareness of (biased) attentional allocation will lead to greater self-regulatory control of attention and thereby ameliorate attentional bias and its maladaptive sequelae. To do so, A-FACT delivers computerized, personalized, real-time feedback regarding a person's (biased) allocation of attention concurrent with its expression. In a randomized control experimental design, we tested A-FACT relative to an active placebo control condition among anxious adults (N = 40, 52.5% women, M(SD) = 24.3(4) years old). We found that relative to the placebo control condition, A-FACT led to: (a) reduced levels of attentional bias to threat; (b) (non-significantly) lower rate of behavioral avoidance of exposure to an anxiogenic stressor; and (c) faster rate of emotional recovery following the stressor. The findings are discussed with respect to the novelty and significance of the proposed conceptual perspective, methodology, and intervention paradigm targeting attentional bias.
•Novel demonstration of real-time feedback on expression of attentional bias.•A-FACT led to reduced attentional bias to threat.•A-FACT led to (non-significantly) reduced avoidance of an anxiogenic stressor.•A-FACT led to greater emotional recovery following an anxiogenic stressor.
We aimed to illuminate the theorized, yet empirically elusive, connection between covert and overt attentional processes subserving attentional biases (AB). We found that covert and overt attentional ...processes were each expressed dynamically, fluctuating from moment-to-moment between phases of (over)engagement and phases of avoidance of threat stimuli. The key features of the temporal dynamics of covert and overt attentional processes were significantly correlated. Moreover, the real-time, dynamic expressions of overt and covert attentional processes were significantly coupled from trial-to-trial; and voluntary inhibition of overt attention decoupled their connection in time. In contrast to this dynamic process perspective on AB, when quantified through the decades-old paradigm conceptualizing AB as a static trait-like phenomenon, covert and overt attentional processes demonstrated (seemingly) no association and poor psychometrics. We discuss the implications of the findings for better understanding the nature of AB, its measurement, bio-psycho-behavioral correlates, and clinical modification.
We tested whether mindfulness de-couples the expected anxiogenic effects of distress intolerance on psychological and physiological reactivity to and recovery from an anxiogenic stressor among ...participants experimentally sensitized to experience distress.
N = 104 daily smokers underwent 18-hours of biochemically-verified smoking deprivation. Participants were then randomized to a 7-min analogue mindfulness intervention (present moment attention and awareness training; PMAA) or a cope-as-usual control condition; and subsequently exposed to a 2.5-min paced over breathing (hyperventilation) stressor designed to elicit acute anxious arousal. Psychological and physiological indices of anxious arousal (Skin Conductance Levels; SCL) as well as emotion (dys)regulation (Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia; RSA) were measured before, during and following the stressor.
We found that PMAA reduced psycho-physiological dysregulation in response to an anxiogenic stressor, as well as moderated the anxiogenic effect of distress intolerance on psychological but not physiological responding to the stressor among smokers pre-disposed to experience distress via deprivation.
The present study findings have a number of theoretical and clinical implications for work on mindfulness mechanisms, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and smoking cessation interventions.
•Brief mindfulness meditation buffers the anxiogenic effects of distress intolerance among deprived smokers exposed to stress.•Brief mindfulness meditation improves physiological regulation of anxious arousal elicited by stress.•Findings relevant to mindfulness intervention and mechanisms research as well as smoking cessation intervention research.
Survivors of violent conflict and atrocities, forcibly displaced persons (FDPs) are at risk for trauma-related mental health problems. Experimental clinical research key to the development of ...interventions tailored to FDPs is limited. We examined relations among attentional bias (AB) to trauma cues, posttraumatic stress symptom (PTS) severity, and behavioral avoidance of exposure to trauma-related stimuli. A total of 110 Sudanese male asylum seekers (age M = 32.7, SD = 6.5) were recruited from the community in Israel. AB temporal dynamics significantly predicted levels of PTS as well as behavioral avoidance of exposure to trauma stimuli specifically. No effects were observed when AB was quantified traditionally as an aggregated mean representing a static trait. Findings demonstrate the potential role of AB dynamics in PTS among FDPs, help disambiguate extant mixed findings between AB and PTS, and suggest that cognitive bias modification targeting AB dynamics may be a promising new direction for FDP mental health research.
Fundamental questions regarding the nature and function of attentional bias (AB) to threat in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remain unanswered. We tested the temporal interplay ...between trauma exposure, dysregulated attentional processing of threatening information pre- and post-trauma, and the development of posttraumatic intrusions.
Response time to trauma-related threat, trauma-unrelated threat, as well as to trauma-related but typically emotionally-neutral stimuli was assessed using the dot probe task before and one week after watching a violent movie scene that served as a trauma analogue. AB was analyzed as a dynamic process by means of a recently developed approach indexing momentary fluctuations of AB toward and away from emotional stimuli. Posttraumatic intrusions were measured daily over the week following analogue trauma exposure.
We found that key features of AB dynamics to trauma-related stimuli at post-, but not pre-, trauma exposure were associated with posttraumatic intrusions. Notably, these post-trauma exposure effects were specific to biased attentional processing of trauma-related but not threatening stimuli unrelated to the traumatic event. In line with a growing body of findings, pre- and post-trauma exposure traditional aggregated mean AB scores were not similarly associated with posttraumatic intrusions.
We conclude that one mechanism through which trauma exposure may contribute to the development of PTSD is through its dysregulation of attentional processing of trauma event-related cues. Future work may focus on delineating the developmental course through which attentional dysregulation post-trauma and posttraumatic intrusions unfold and interact.
•We tested relations between traumatic stress, attention bias, and trauma-related intrusions.•Dysregulated attention post-trauma predicts intrusions in daily living.•Traditional mean bias scores post-trauma did not predict intrusions post-trauma.•Attentional bias pre-trauma did not predict frequency of intrusions post-trauma.•Dysregulated attention due to trauma exposure may contribute to PTSD etiology.
We tested whether cognitive fusion impairs emotion differentiation and thereby mediates relations between cognitive fusion and depression and panic symptoms among 55 adults (M
= 26.8 (3.9), 50.9% ...women). Using visual stimuli, we elicited multiple emotion states and measured (a) emotional intensity - the subjective emotion intensity of elicited emotions (i.e. Specific Emotion Intensity - SEI), as well as (b) emotional differentiation - the degree of co-activation of multiple negative emotions when a specific emotion was elicited (i.e. Multiple Emotion Co-Activation - MECA). First, as hypothesised, we found that cognitive fusion predicted lower levels of emotion differentiation (MECA). In contrast, as hypothesised, these effects were significantly greater than the (null) effects of cognitive fusion on emotion intensity (SEI). Second, as predicted, MECA, but not SEI, predicted depression and panic symptoms. Finally, we found that MECA mediated the effects of cognitive fusion on depression and panic symptoms. The present findings contribute novel, preliminary empirical insight into associations between cognitive fusion, impaired emotion differentiation and mental ill-health.
Recent findings suggest biases of emotional attention (BEA) may be expressed dynamically, fluctuating from moment to moment between overengagement and avoidance of emotional stimuli. We attempted to ...modify these temporal dynamics of BEA to threat among trait-anxious adults (N = 61) using Attention Feedback Awareness and Control Training (A-FACT). A-FACT is a novel intervention methodology that delivers real-time feedback to a person concurrent with her/his dynamic BEA expression. We found that relative to a placebo control condition, A-FACT led to significantly reduced BEA dynamics toward and away from threat, temporal variability in BEA, and emotional reactivity to an anxiogenic stressor. Findings illustrate that BEA may be optimally conceptualized and quantified as a dynamic process in time and that intervention methods sensitive to and capable of targeting BEA process dynamics in real time—as in A-FACT—represent a promising new direction for cognitive bias modification research.
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