attentional bias and anxiety

Question 1

What is the difference between trait anxiety and state anxiety?

Answer 1

• Trait anxiety refers to constant, long-term anxiety.
• State anxiety is anxiety that is context-dependent and varies with the situation or location.

Question 2

What are clinical anxiety disorders?

Answer 2

Anxiety disorders diagnosed in clinical settings, often involving excessive fear, worry, and related symptoms. Examples include PTSD, panic disorder, OCD, social phobia, and specific phobias like fear of snakes or spiders.

Question 3

What is the Emotional Stroop task?

Answer 3

A task where participants name the color of threat-related words. It is used to examine how anxiety can impact attention.

Question 4

What did the study by Williams, Mathews & Macleod (1996) investigate?

Answer 4

The Emotional Stroop task, investigating attention biases in individuals with anxiety disorders like PTSD, panic disorder, OCD, social phobia, and specific phobias (e.g., fear of snakes and spiders).

Question 5

What did Watts et al. (1986) find in their study on phobics and the Emotional Stroop task?

Answer 5

Participants with spider phobia showed greater difficulty naming the color of spider-related words compared to controls.

Question 6

What is the Dot-Probe task?

Answer 6

A task used to measure attentional bias, where participants respond to the location of a dot that appears after threat-related words or images.

Question 7

In the Dot-Probe task, what indicates an attentional bias for threat?

Answer 7

Faster responses to a dot appearing in the location previously occupied by threat-related stimuli compared to the other location.

Question 8

What did MacLeod & Mathews (1988) find in their Dot-Probe task study?

Answer 8

Individuals with higher trait anxiety displayed a stronger attentional bias towards threat-related words, responding faster when the dot appeared in the location of the threat.

Question 9

What did Bradley, Mogg & Millar (2000) investigate?

Answer 9

They used the Dot-Probe task to examine attention to various types of faces (threat, sad, happy, neutral) in individuals with varying levels of state anxiety and depression.

Question 10

What was found in the study by Cannito et al. (2020) using the Dot-Probe task?

Answer 10

The study found that health anxiety predicted attentional bias in a COVID-themed Dot-Probe task.

Question 11

What did the study by Öhman et al. (2001) find regarding visual search and fear-relevant stimuli?

Answer 11

People are faster to detect fear-relevant stimuli, particularly when they have a pre-existing fear of them.

Question 12

What are the theoretical issues surrounding attentional biases in anxiety?

Answer 12

The two main questions are:

• Are biases unconditional?
• Does anxiety cause attentional bias, or does attentional bias cause anxiety?

Question 13

How does relevance impact attentional biases?

Answer 13

Tasks like Dot-Probe, Visual Search, and the Emotional Stroop all focus on task-relevant locations, meaning individuals pay attention to locations they are already focused on.

Question 14

What did Lichtenstein-Vidne and colleagues (2012, 2017) find in their research on emotional distraction?

Answer 14

In non-clinical populations, emotional distraction occurs only when searching for emotional pictures, not neutral ones.

Question 15

What did Lichtenstein-Vidne and colleagues (2012, 2017) find in individuals with anxiety disorders?

Answer 15

Patients with anxiety disorders show emotional distraction even when searching for neutral pictures, suggesting threat is more relevant for anxious individuals.

Question 16

Are attentional biases specific to anxiety?

Answer 16

Research by Purkis, Lester & Field (2011) suggests that attentional biases are not exclusive to anxiety but may also occur in other contexts.

Question 17

What did Purkis, Lester & Field (2011) study about attentional biases?

Answer 17

They investigated whether attentional biases were specific to anxiety and found that these biases may also be present in other emotional states or disorders.

Question 18

How can attentional biases be trained, according to Macleod & Clarke (2015)?

Answer 18

Attentional bias training involves consistently presenting probes in the location of threat or non-threat stimuli, with the goal of modifying attentional focus.

Question 19

What did studies on attentional bias training reveal about its impact on anxiety?

Answer 19

Training to shift attention away from threat-related stimuli has modest effects in reducing anxiety, indicating that attentional bias could play a role in anxiety.

Question 20

What effect does bias training have on individuals with anxiety disorders?

Answer 20

Bias training, where participants are trained to focus away from threat stimuli, has been shown to lead to modest decreases in anxiety.