Trait anxiety, defensiveness and selective processing of threat: an investigation using two measures of attentional bias

Mogg, Karin; Bradley, Brendan P.; Dixon, Clare; Fisher, Susan E.; Twelftree, Helen; McWilliams, Andrew

doi:10.1016/s0191-8869(99)00157-9

Cited by 163 publications

(132 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…One study (Mogg et al, 2000a), in accordance with Eysenck's theory (1997), found a Stroop facilitation effect for threat words in participants with a repressive coping style. Two other studies (Myers & McKenna, 1996;Newman & McKinney, 2002) found that all groups except the repressor group showed Stroop interference for threat words vs. control words; the repressor group did not show a facilitation effect, however, but was instead relatively unaffected by the content of threat words.…”

Section: Repressive Coping Stylesupporting

confidence: 54%

“…If this is true, one should expect the repressors to selectively attend away from threat-related words relative to neutral words. Although this effect has been observed in one study (Mogg et al, 2000a), previous findings with regard to these individuals have, however, been far from conclusive (Brosschot et al, 1999;Fox, 1994;Myers & McKenna, 1996). Some limitations of these studies are that (a) they have only used unmasked words as part of the emotional Stroop task, and (b) they have only used student samples.…”

Section: Purposementioning

confidence: 85%

“…For example, compared to controls, patients with social phobia show selective attention to social threat words on both the emotional Stroop task (Mattia, Heimberg & Hope, 1993) and the attentional probe task (Musa, Lépine, Clark, Mansell, & Ehlers, 2003), but that equivalent effects have also been achieved by means of the two different attentional tasks by using the same participants (e.g., Mogg et al, 2000a). The inter-task associations between bias indices are either moderate (Egloff & Hock, 2003), small (Brosschot, de Ruiter, & Kindt, 1999) or nonexistent (Mogg et al, 2000a) in effect size which thus implicates that these two measures selective attention seem to be somewhat independent of each other, and perhaps that different underlying processes might be involved. One limitation of the attentional probe task is that it permits several shifts of attention toward and away from the threat stimulus before probe onset (e.g., Mogg, Bradley, Miles, & Dixon, 2004).…”

Section: How Do We Measure Selective Attention?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another reason for the lack of convergent validity that has been put forward is that there are in fact different processes involved. To be precise, whereas the attentional probe task is assumed to reflect the process of visual scanning for cues, the emotional Stroop task is assumed to reflect a process in which specific information must be disentangled (e.g., Mogg et al, 2000a). Even though the lack of inter-task association points to the involvement of different underlying processes in selective attention, it does, however, seem reasonable to assume that a common basic underlying mechanism must indeed be involved in order to account for the fact that corresponding effects can be achieved by means of these two different measures of selective attention.…”

Section: How Do We Measure Selective Attention?mentioning

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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Section: Repressive Coping Stylesupporting

confidence: 54%

Section: Purposementioning

confidence: 85%

Section: How Do We Measure Selective Attention?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Do We Measure Selective Attention?mentioning

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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“…Furthermore, it has been observed that bias indices intended to measure the same construct often do not correlate with each other. Gotlib et al (2004), for example, found correlations close to zero between attention bias towards sad faces in a dot probe task and emotional Stroop scores (see also Dalgleish et al, 2003;Mogg et al, 2000). This finding raises doubts over the convergent validity of these measures (but see Salemink and van den Hout (2010) and Griffith et al (in press) who managed to find acceptable psychometric properties of their tasks).…”

Section: Methodological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The combined cognitive bias hypothesis in depression

Everaert

Koster

Derakshan

2012

Clinical Psychology Review

270

179

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Drawing from substantial evidence demonstrating cognitive biases in depression at various stages of information processing (i.e., attention, interpretation, memory, cognitive control), we argue for an approach that considers the interplay among these processes. This paper attempts to apply the combined cognitive bias hypothesis (Hirsch, Mathews, & Clark, 2006) to depression research and reviews competing theoretical frameworks that have guided research in this area. We draw on current findings from behavioral studies on the interplay between depression-related processing biases. These data indicate that various cognitive biases are associated. However, it is not clear whether single or multiple biases are most predictive of depressive symptoms. We conclude this article with theoretical and clinical implications of the current state of research in this field and propose a number of ways in which research on the combined cognitive bias hypothesis can be advanced. A State-of-the-art Major depression is a prevalent psychiatric disorder that is associated with debilitating symptomatic suffering, functional impairments, and high societal costs (Kessler & Wang, 2009). Notwithstanding a range of well-established psychological and pharmacological interventions, relapse and recurrence rates of depression remain high (Vittengl, Clark, Dunn, & Jarrett, 2007) indicating that current therapies do not sufficiently address vulnerability factors for this burdensome disorder. Moreover, with each successive depressive episode the risk for recurrence increases (Boland & Keller, 2009), which points to an expanding vulnerability with multiple episodes. Hence, profound insight into the mechanisms involved in the etiology and maintenance of major depression seems essential in improving contemporary treatment options and the prevention of depression.In the past three decades, research inspired by cognitive accounts of depression has been successful in identifying vulnerability factors for this disorder. Apart from substantial research examining depressive cognitive content as a vulnerability factor (e.g., negative thoughts), a promising line of research highlights the role of cognitive biases in the development, maintenance, and relapse/recurrence of depression (for reviews see Mathews & MacLeod, 2005). Research efforts in this particular area of interest have typically focused on abnormalities in attention, interpretation, and memory processes, which are considered to be instrumental in the understanding of the processes involved in these cognitive biases. More recently, there is growing interest into cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying cognitive control impairments, which may operate across a variety of cognitive biases. Indeed a substantial number of studies on emotional information processing in depressed samples provide evidence that depression is characterized by attention, interpretation, and memory biases, especially for negative information (see below). COMBINED COGNITIVE BIAS HYPOTHESIS IN DEPRESSION 4This resea...

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Comparing Two Implicit Cognitive Measures of Sexual Interest: A Pictorial Modified Stroop Task and the Implicit Association Test

Ciardha

Gormley

2009

Cognitive Approaches to the Assessment of Sexual Interest in Sexual Offenders

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Trait anxiety, defensiveness and selective processing of threat: an investigation using two measures of attentional bias

Cited by 163 publications

References 26 publications

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

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

The combined cognitive bias hypothesis in depression

Comparing Two Implicit Cognitive Measures of Sexual Interest: A Pictorial Modified Stroop Task and the Implicit Association Test

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