Attention Bias to Emotional Faces Varies by IQ and Anxiety in Williams Syndrome

McGrath, Lauren M.; Oates, Joyce M.; Dai, Yael G.; Dodd, Helen F.; Waxler, Jessica L.; Clements, Caitlin C.; Weill, Sydney; Hoffnagle, Alison G.; Anderson, Erin M.; MacRae, Rebecca; Mullett, Jennifer; McDougle, Christopher J.; Pober, Barbara R.; Smoller, Jordan W.

doi:10.1007/s10803-016-2748-y

Cited by 21 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS; Spence, 1998) The SCAS was administered to parents of WS individuals (Nauta et al, 2004;Spence, 1998). Previous studies have successfully used this scale with children, adolescents, and adults with WS (Dodd, Schniering, & Porter, 2009;McGrath et al, 2016). The SCAS contains 38 items in total, with six subscales, evaluating symptoms on differing domains of anxiety (Nauta et al, 2004).…”

Section: Wj-iii Cogmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While these results provide evidence that the attention bias for positive social stimuli in WS extends beyond social-perceptual stimuli, certain limitations must be addressed. Although the WS sample recruited for the current study is equivalent in size to other studies in this area (e.g., see Dodd & Porter, 2010;Goldman et al, 2017), it is still a relatively small sample, and did not allow for a comprehensive investigation of withinsyndrome heterogeneity, as seen in McGrath et al (2016). Administering the dot-probe task using the face stimuli developed for this task to a larger number of WS participants would enable us to further investigate how attention to these stimuli may systematically vary as a result of cognitive ability and anxiety symptomatology.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extending the positive bias in Williams syndrome: The influence of biographical information on attention allocation

Boulton

Porter

2019

Dev Psychopathol

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There is evidence that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) show an attention bias toward positive social-perceptual (happy) faces. Research has not yet considered whether this attention bias extends beyond social-perceptual stimuli to perceptually neutral stimuli that are paired with positive (trustworthy) biographical information. Fourteen participants with WS (mean age = 21 years, 1 month) learned to associate perceptually neutral faces with trustworthy (positive), neutral, or untrustworthy (negative) biographical information, before completing a dot-probe task where the same biographical faces were presented. The performance of the WS group was compared to two typically developing control groups, individually matched to the WS individuals on chronological age and mental age, respectively. No between-group bias toward untrustworthy characters was observed. The WS group displayed a selective attention bias toward trustworthy characters compared to both control groups (who did not show such a bias). Results support previous findings that indicate WS individuals show a preference for positive social-perceptual stimuli (happy faces) at the neurological, physiological, and attentional levels. The current findings extend this work to include a “top-down” positive bias. The implications of a positive bias that extends beyond social-perceptual stimuli (or “bottom-up” processes) in this syndrome are discussed.

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Section: Wj-iii Cogmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extending the positive bias in Williams syndrome: The influence of biographical information on attention allocation

Boulton

Porter

2019

Dev Psychopathol

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“…The dot probe compares response times to probes in spatial proximity to threatening or neutral stimuli to quantify a threat-related attentional bias (MacLeod et al 1986). This task has been used to ascertain attentional bias in a variety of child populations, including those with depression (Joormann et al 2007;Neshat-Doost et al 2000;Taghavi et al 1999), post-traumatic stress disorder (Bertó et al 2017;Briggs-Gowan et al 2015;Dalgleish et al 2001), autism spectrum disorder (Hollocks et al 2013;May et al 2015;Moore et al 2012;Zhao et al 2016), Williams syndrome (Dodd and Porter 2010;McGrath et al 2016), asthma (Dudeney et al 2017;Lowther et al 2016), and a range of anxiety disorders (Hunt et al 2007;Salum et al 2013;Sylvester et al 2016;Vasey et al 1995;Waters et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and Attentional Bias in Children with Specific Learning Disorders

Haft

Duong

et al. 2018

J Abnorm Child Psychol

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Children with specific learning disorders (SLDs) face a unique set of socio-emotional challenges as a result of their academic difficulties. Although a higher prevalence of anxiety in children with SLD is often reported, there is currently no research on cognitive mechanisms underlying this anxiety. One way to elucidate these mechanisms is to investigate attentional bias to threatening stimuli using a dot-probe paradigm. Our study compared children ages 9-16 with SLD (n = 48) to typically-developing (TD) controls (n = 33) on their attentional biases to stimuli related to general threats, reading, and stereotypes of SLD. We found a significant threat bias away from reading-related stimuli in the SLD, but not TD group. This attentional bias was not observed with the general threat and stereotype stimuli. Further, children with SLD reported greater anxiety compared to TD children. These results suggest that children with SLD experience greater anxiety, which may partially stem from reading specifically. The finding of avoidance rather than vigilance to reading stimuli indicates the use of more top-down attentional control. This work has important implications for therapeutic approaches to anxiety in children with SLD and highlights the need for attention to socio-emotional difficulties in this population. Future research is needed to further investigate the cognitive aspects of socio-emotional difficulties in children with SLD, as well as how this may impact academic outcomes.

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“…Secondly, the normality tests and homogeneity of variance tests of RT showed that the data was suitable for analysis of variance. Finally, we used a median split at social anxiety score = 7 to define a LSA (low social anxiety, N = 92, range 0–7) and HSA group ( N = 76, range 8–18, Mcgrath et al, 2016). Then, a Group (LSA and HSA) × Gender (male and female) × Cue Type (happy, disgusted, neutral) ANOVA on the RT was examined for the valid position (to assess hypervigilance) and invalid position (to assess disengagement) separately 1 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Differences in the Difficulty in Disengaging from Threat among Children and Adolescents With Social Anxiety

Zhang

Xie

et al. 2017

Front. Psychol.

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There is some research showing that social anxiety is related with attentional bias to threat. However, others fail to find this relationship and propose that gender differences may play a role. The aim of this study was to investigate the gender differences in the subcomponents of attentional bias to threat (hypervigilance and difficulty in disengaging) among children and adolescents with social anxiety. Overall, 181 youngsters aged between 10 and 14 participated in the current study. Images of disgusted faces were used as threat stimuli in an Exogenous Cueing Task was used to measure the subcomponents of attentional bias. Additionally, the Social Anxiety Scale for Children was used to measure social anxiety. The repeated measures ANOVA showed that male participants with high social anxiety showed difficulty in disengaging from threat, but this was not the case for female participants. Our results indicated that social anxiety is more related with attentional bias to threat among male children and adolescents than females. These findings suggested that developing gender-specific treatments for social anxiety may improve treatment effects.

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Attention Bias to Emotional Faces Varies by IQ and Anxiety in Williams Syndrome

Cited by 21 publications

References 68 publications

Extending the positive bias in Williams syndrome: The influence of biographical information on attention allocation

Extending the positive bias in Williams syndrome: The influence of biographical information on attention allocation

Anxiety and Attentional Bias in Children with Specific Learning Disorders

Gender Differences in the Difficulty in Disengaging from Threat among Children and Adolescents With Social Anxiety

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