Attention bias away from threat during acute stress may relate to risk for PTSD. This suggests that neurocognitive measures may index risk for PTSD.

No abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with threat-related attention and interpretation biases. Recent research suggests that attention control abilities moderate these associations. The current study examines threat-related attentional engagement and disengagement biases, negative interpretation bias, and attention control among youth with SAD (n=71) and non-anxious youth (n=42). We further explore interactions between cognitive biases, and between these biases and attention control, in predicting SAD. Relative to non-anxious youth, youth with SAD had poorer attention control, p=.001, greater difficulty disengaging from angry faces, p=.05, and a negative biased interpretation of ambiguous social scenarios, p =.01. However, no interactions were found among these factors in relation to SAD diagnosis or symptoms. The present results add to research on cognitive biases in anxious children, emphasizing a distinct contribution of each of these cognitive mechanisms, rather than their interactional influences. Findings are discussed in relation to cognitive developmental models of anxiety.

No abstract