Selective attention to threat: A test of two cognitive models of anxiety

Mogg, Karin; McNamara, James F.; Powys, Mark; Rawlinson, Hannah; Seiffer, Anna; Bradley, Brendan P.

doi:10.1080/026999300378888

Cited by 198 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…In comparison, the pathophysiology of GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) is relatively understudied (Dugas, 2000;Mennin, Heimberg, Turk, & Fresco, 2002). GAD is specifically characterized by attentional biases to threatening stimuli (Bradley, Mogg, Falla, & Hamilton, 1998;Broadbent & Broadbent, 1988;MacNamara & Hajcak, 2010;Mogg et al, 2000), and increased early attentional vigilance in GAD is likely to result in a greater likelihood of detecting threat (Weinberg & Hajcak, 2011).…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gradients of Fear Potentiated Startle During Generalization, Extinction, and Extinction Recall—and Their Relations With Worry

Dunning

Hajcak

2015

Behavior Therapy

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S S S t t t o o o n n n y y y B B B r r r o o o o o o k k k U U U n n n i i i v v v e e e r r r s s s i i i t t t y y yThe official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. May 2012ii Stony Brook UniversityThe Graduate School Jonathan Paul DunningWe, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. 2012It is well established that fear conditioning plays a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Moreover, abnormalities in fear generalization, extinction learning, and extinction recall have also been associated with anxiety. However, no study to date has examined extinction learning or extinction recall using a generalization task. Hence, in the present study, participants were shocked following a CS+ and were also presented with stimuli that ranged in perceptual similarity to the CS+ (i.e., 20, 40, or 60% smaller or larger than the CS+) during a fear generalization phase. Participants were also presented with the same stimuli during an extinction learning phase and an extinction recall phase one week later; no shocks were presented during extinction learning or recall. Lastly, participants completed self-report measures of anxiety and worry. Results indicated that fear potentiated startle (FPS) to the CS+ and CS±20% shapes was present in generalization and extinction learning, suggesting that fear generalization persisted into extinction. FPS to the CS+ was also evident one week later during iv extinction recall. Hence, fear may be more resistant to extinction in generalization paradigms, where there is ambiguity regarding the CS+. In addition, higher levels of worry were associated with greater FPS to the CS+ during generalization and extinction learning phases. Moreover, individuals high in worry had fear response gradients that were steeper during both generalization and extinction learning. This suggests that high levels of worry (characteristic of generalized anxiety disorder) are associated with greater discriminative fear conditioning to threatening compared to safe stimuli but less fear generalization to perceptually similar stimuli. Dedication PageThis work is dedicated to my wife Crystal. For countless years, she has given me abundant and unwavering support, not only in my academic and career endeavors, but also in life. Her love and encouragement has revealed to me the many wonders of life, and I look forward to an amazing future with her and our family.

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Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gradients of Fear Potentiated Startle During Generalization, Extinction, and Extinction Recall—and Their Relations With Worry

Dunning

Hajcak

2015

Behavior Therapy

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“…Incorrect responses (3%) and outliers in response times on the Stroop task were excluded from analysis, following the procedure of Mogg et al (2000). Outliers were identified using box and whisker plots and response times below 300ms and above 900ms (5%) were removed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional biases for food stimuli in external eaters: Possible mechanism for stress-induced eating?

Newman¹,

O’Connor²,

Conner³

2008

Appetite

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External eaters reportedly increase snack intake when stressed, which could be due to a shift in attention towards food stimuli. Attentional biases for food stimuli were tested in high and low external eaters in stress and control conditions, using a computerised Stroop. A significant interaction was observed between external eating group and condition for snack word bias. This suggested that low external eaters have a greater bias for snack words when unstressed and that stressed, high external have a greater bias for snack words than stressed, low external eaters, which could contribute to stress-induced snack intake in high external eaters.

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“…If effects of selective attention occur as a consequence of something that could be conceptualised as evaluative bias, in the sense that these individuals evaluate threatening stimuli as more threatening than do those who do not possess evaluative bias, there should be (1) a quantitative difference between these sets of individuals in response to the presentation of threatening material (relative to non-threatening material), and (2) a quantitative difference between the intensities of different threat stimuli (i.e., threat value) in everyone. As noted in the Introduction, there are studies supporting the view that highly threatening cues produce selective attention effects that are significantly stronger than both neutral and mildly threatening pictorial stimuli (Koster et al, 2005;Mogg et al, 2000b;Wilson & MacLeod, 2003) in all individuals. This does indeed suggest that the responses are related to the degree to which the stimulus content is being evaluated with respect to its threat values.…”

Section: Preferential Preattentive Processing: An Extended Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…In their view, highly threatening cues should always be given attentional priority at the expense of competing representations, whereas controlled effort serves to oppose the tendency for weak threat cues to become dominant. In fact, one serious problem with the model by Williams and co-workers (1997) is the demonstration of the existence of biased attentional processing favouring highly threatening stimuli irrespectively of anxiety levels (Koster, Verschuere, Crombez, & van Damme, 2005;Mogg et al, 2000b; see also Wilson & MacLeod, 2003, for similar finding). In fact, similar to Mathews and Mackintosh (1998), the model by Mogg and Bradley (1998) explicitly proposes that, if the threat value is sufficiently high all individuals should show selective attention.…”

Section: Mechanisms Underlying Selective Attention Towards Threatmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Anxiety acts as a warning signal for future danger or harm, and is therefore adaptive. Some authors have argued that avoidance of threat is not always adaptive (e.g., Mathews & MacLeod, 2002;Mogg et al, 2000b). From an evolutionary perspective, we must have an effective threat detection system so that attention is directed toward severe (but not to mild) threat in our environment.…”

Section: What Is the Functional Significance Of Selective Attention Amentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does the Way in Which We Perceive the World Make Us Susceptible to Anxiety?

Jansson¹

2005

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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One major focus of anxiety research in recent years has been the identification of cognitive factors that promote increased vulnerability to anxiety. Cognitive formulations propose that anxiety is characterised by an increased tendency to attend to negatively valenced emotional information, and that this bias may play a causal role in the development and maintenance of clinical anxiety. Evidence suggests that this anxiety-linked processing bias occurs even in conditions in which the stimuli are masked in order to prevent awareness of the content (i.e., preattentive bias). The present thesis focused principally on the preferential processing of threat-related information that occurs outside awareness. Two different outcome measures were used to index preferential preattentive processing of threat-related information in non-clinical populations: The emotional Stroop task was used to index selective attention to masked presentation of threatening word stimuli, whereas skin conductance responses were used to index selective autonomic responses to masked presentation of threatening pictorial stimuli. The empirical studies in the present thesis showed that elevated levels of trait anxiety promote preferential preattentive processing of negatively valenced information, whereas elevated levels of social desirability (interpreted as defensiveness) generally prevent preferential preattentive processing of negatively valenced information, especially among those at higher levels of trait anxiety, irrespective of outcome measure used. Moreover, previous research has demonstrated that a person's most common emotional reaction when encountering a stressful event is causally influenced by that person's habitual tendency to selectively encode the most threatening aspects of all available information. Thus, preattentive bias (as measured with the emotional Stroop task) was used to predict the emotional responses (as seen on self-reported emotional distress and autonomic reactivity) following exposure to a laboratory stressor. This study showed that preattentive bias to negative information had significant effects on both self-reported and physiological measures in response to a laboratory stressor, but in diametrically opposite directions. Specifically, whereas preattentive bias was positively associated with self-reported negative emotional response, it was negatively associated with a physiological indicator of emotional response. The results were discussed in terms of an inability to automatically inhibit the processing of threatening cues, which seems to be a vulnerability marker for anxiety. Whether this bias is ultimately sufficient for the development of clinical anxiety remains to be examined in future research. Additionally, more information is needed before it can be established that the emotional Stroop task can be viewed as a reliable diagnostic tool for determining an individual's anxiety status.

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Selective attention to threat: A test of two cognitive models of anxiety

Cited by 198 publications

References 30 publications

Gradients of Fear Potentiated Startle During Generalization, Extinction, and Extinction Recall—and Their Relations With Worry

Gradients of Fear Potentiated Startle During Generalization, Extinction, and Extinction Recall—and Their Relations With Worry

Attentional biases for food stimuli in external eaters: Possible mechanism for stress-induced eating?

Does the Way in Which We Perceive the World Make Us Susceptible to Anxiety?

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