6: Attention and Emotional Disorders Flashcards
What is an attentional bias?
When there is a discrete change in the direction in which a person’s attention is focussed, making them more aware of that aspect of their environment.
Are attentional biases voluntary or involuntary?
Often perceived as involuntary, but can operate voluntarily.
What is a perceptual bias?
Tuning in more quickly and extracting more information from the environment.
What is a response bias?
Output mechanisms are biased to respond to a wide variety of stimuli with the concern-related word.
What is selective attention?
Greater priority is given to some material.
What is attentional orienting?
The process of moving attention from one location to another.
Describe the posterior attentional system.
Reactive symmetry that orients the attentional spotlight from one location to another.
Describe the anterior attentional system.
Executive system that carries out more voluntary attentional functions.
What is attentional control?
The self-regulatory capacity to control attention in relation to positive and negative reactions.
Attentional control is a (posterior/anterior) attentional system.
Anterior.
What is excitation?
Enhancing availability of selected information.
What is inhibition?
Suppressing irrelevant or to-be-ignored information.
What is the dual process in attenting?
Facilitation of responses to selected informations and slowing of responses to irrelevant information.
The more interference a distractor causes…
…the more inhibition is required.
Describe selective attention in anxiety.
Well understood in GAD as speeded engagement with threat.
Describe attentional orienting in anxiety.
Not well understood and mostly from subclinical groups, challenged ignoring negative information.
Give 3 paradigms that measure attentional bias in anxiety.
Emotional Stroop task, dot probe task and spatial orienting task.
Describe the main attentional bias in anxiety.
Selective early processing of threat.
Give 4 consequence of attentional biases in depression.
Impaired social and work functioning, challenged engaging with psychotherapy, challenges taking medication, and poor affect regulation.
Give 4 paradigms that measure attentional bias in depression.
Event related potentials measured by EEG, eye tracking, attentional switching performance, and Emotional Stroop tasks.
What is P300
An ERP component which measures attention to negative words.
Using the oddball task and EEG recording, what did Illardi et al., 2007 find,
Enhanced attention in depressed people for negative word stimuli, and no difference between previously and never depressed people, suggesting a state effect.
Using eye tracking, what did Sanchez et al., 2013 find?
People with MDD has difficulties disengaging with sad faces, but no other problems.
What is set switching?
The executive function ability to withdraw focus on current task demands add allocate focus to new demands based on environmental changes.
What 2 processes support set switching?
Non-inhibitory processing to develop representation of new task demands and backward inhibition to limit effects of previous trials.
Give 2 broad individual differences affecting attention and depression.
Rumination and motivation.
