Cognitive models of anxiety suggest that threat-related attentional biases are associated with youth anxiety disorders. Although meta-analyses suggest that anxious youths display a bias toward threat, there is variability among studies, with youths displaying either an attention bias toward or away from threat. One possibility that may account for these discrepancies is the effect of youth age. Previous studies have found an effect of age on attentional biases in nonclinical samples. In this study, we examined the effects of age on attentional biases in youths diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Clinically anxious youths (N = 33) completed the probe detection task using threat-related word stimuli. Our results revealed a significant effect of age, with older youths (11–17 years) displaying a significant bias away from threat and younger youths (8–10 years) displaying a nonsignificant bias toward threat. These findings suggest that anxious youth may have either an attentional bias toward or away from threat-related words depending on age.

A growing evidence base supports attention bias modification (ABM) as a novel intervention for anxiety. However, research has been largely conducted with adults and analogue samples, leaving the impact of ABM for child anxiety be fully elucidated. Thus, we conducted a double-blind, randomized controlled trial testing ABM efficacy versus an attention control condition (CC) in 31 children diagnosed with anxiety disorder. Youth were assigned to 4 weeks of ABM where attention was trained away from threat, or a sham CC in which no bias training occurred. Findings indicate that significantly more youth in the ABM versus CC group were considered treatment responders post training. The ABM versus CC group also demonstrated a greater decrease in anxiety severity, with this difference being marginally significant. Findings lend support for the potential of ABM in reducing youth anxiety. Further work regarding mechanisms of action is warranted to advance ABM research.

Anxiety severity in youth is associated with a host of negative outcomes including poor response to treatment. Thus, a better understanding of factors that contribute to anxiety severity is needed. Such factors may include parental anxiety as well as anxiety-related approach and avoidance behaviors in both children and parents. In this study, we examined automatic behavioral tendencies as a method of quantifying anxiety-related approach and avoidance behaviors in children and their parents. Clinically anxious youth (N 5 19) with mixed anxiety diagnoses and their parents completed an approach-avoidance task (AAT) comprising different emotional expressions. Our results suggest that in addition to parent report of youth anxiety, both youth and parent automatic avoidance biases predict clinician-rated youth anxiety severity accounting for 62% of the variance in clinician-rated youth anxiety. These results suggest that the AAT may be a useful measure of automatic behavioral tendencies in clinically anxious youth and their parents and that these factors may be relevant to youth anxiety severity.