Intergenerational transmission of biased information processing in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following displacement after World War II

Wittekind, Charlotte E.; Jelinek, Lena; Kellner, Michael; Moritz, Steffen; Muhtz, Christoph

doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.06.023

Cited by 24 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(44 reference statements)

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“…Our findings diverge from studies with Vietnam veterans in which children of veterans exhibited attentional biases for trauma-related material compared to children of non-veterans (Motta et al, 1994 , 1997 ). However, our results are in line with a forerunner study in which children of displaced individuals (with and without PTSD) did not show attentional biases for trauma-related material in an EST (Wittekind et al, 2010 ). Furthermore, in an EST, which was also administered in the present study (Wittekind et al, in preparation), there was no evidence for attentional biases in children of traumatized participants.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…These findings were replicated in a sample of children and adolescents (Moradi et al, 1999 ): children whose parents suffered from PTSD exhibited an ESE for threat-related compared to neutral words and compared to the children of healthy control participants. However, conflicting evidence stems from one study in which children of displaced individuals (with and without PTSD) were compared to children of non-traumatized healthy control participants regarding their color naming latencies in an EST (Wittekind et al, 2010 ). There was no evidence for attentional biases for trauma-related words in children of displaced individuals with PTSD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD

et al. 2015

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Using variants of the emotional Stroop task (EST), a large number of studies demonstrated attentional biases in individuals with PTSD across different types of trauma. However, the specificity and robustness of the emotional Stroop effect in PTSD have been questioned recently. In particular, the paradigm cannot disentangle underlying cognitive mechanisms. Transgenerational studies provide evidence that consequences of trauma are not limited to the traumatized people, but extend to close relatives, especially the children. To further investigate attentional biases in PTSD and to shed light on the underlying cognitive mechanism(s), a spatial-cueing paradigm with pictures of different emotional valence (neutral, anxiety, depression, trauma) was administered to individuals displaced as children during World War II (WWII) with (n = 22) and without PTSD (n = 26) as well as to non-traumatized controls (n = 22). To assess whether parental PTSD is associated with biased information processing in children, each one adult offspring was also included in the study. PTSD was not associated with attentional biases for trauma-related stimuli. There was no evidence for a transgenerational transmission of biased information processing. However, when samples were regrouped based on current depression, a reduced inhibition of return (IOR) effect emerged for depression-related cues. IOR refers to the phenomenon that with longer intervals between cue and target the validity effect is reversed: uncued locations are associated with shorter and cued locations with longer RTs. The results diverge from EST studies and demonstrate that findings on attentional biases yield equivocal results across different paradigms. Attentional biases for trauma-related material may only appear for verbal but not for visual stimuli in an elderly population with childhood trauma with PTSD. Future studies should more closely investigate whether findings from younger trauma populations also manifest in older trauma survivors.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD

et al. 2015

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“…Thus, after trauma exposure different components of attentional bias may contribute to the development of or become maintaining factors for qualitatively or quantitatively different posttraumatic pathologies (see also Shipherd and Salters-Pedneault (2008), Pineles et al (2007Pineles et al ( , 2009) for further discussion). This could also be one explanation for inconsistent results in this body of research which are evident even for the Stroop-effect (e.g., Devineni et al, 2004;Wittekind et al, 2010) whose robustness in PTSD has been critically discussed (see meta-analysis by Kimble et al (2009)). …”

Section: Summary Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Attentional bias for affective visual stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder and the role of depression

Hauschildt

Wittekind

Moritz

et al. 2013

Psychiatry Research

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“…Positive scores indicate a greater attentional bias in the processing of negative and positive words. Consistent with procedures of prior studies, trials with reaction times lower than 300 ms or higher than 4000 ms were excluded from analyses [39,102]. In addition, trials where participants indicated the wrong color (error trials) were excluded.…”

Section: Data Reduction and Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional avoidance in peer victimized individuals with and without psychiatric disorders

Iffland

Weitkämper

et al. 2019

BMC Psychol

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Background: Attentional biases are a relatively robust phenomenon among clinical populations but less pronounced in healthy participants. However, regarding the components of attentional biases and the directions of attention allocation, there are several inconsistencies in the literature. The present study examined whether these inconsistencies can be traced back to previous experiences of relational peer victimization in clinical populations. Methods: Participants were subjects with a diagnosed psychiatric disorder (n = 30) and healthy controls (n = 31). Additionally, the sample was divided into two subgroups according to the participants' reports of previous relational peer victimization (high peer victimization: n = 28; low peer victimization: n = 33). Attentional biases were measured by the Emotional Stroop task and a dot-probe task. Results: In both samples, peer victimized participants showed delayed response times when color-naming negative and positive compared to neutral adjectives in the Emotional Stroop task. Likewise, the dot-probe task indicated attentional avoidance of both negative and positive words in peer victimized participants with and without a psychiatric disorder. Interestingly, presence of a psychiatric disorder did not have a significant effect on attentional biases. Conclusion: Both tasks could detect that attentional processes were linked to the experience of peer victimization rather than to the current diagnostic status of the participants. Attentional avoidance of emotional stimuli may prevent victimized individuals from responding adequately to environmental stimuli, which may increase the risk for the development of psychopathology.

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Intergenerational transmission of biased information processing in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following displacement after World War II

Cited by 24 publications

References 31 publications

Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD

Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD

Attentional bias for affective visual stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder and the role of depression

Attentional avoidance in peer victimized individuals with and without psychiatric disorders

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