CCC- Anxiety Flashcards
What are attention biases in anxiety?
The more anxious you are- the more attention you will bring to danger/ threat.
What is trait anxiety?
How anxious you generally are as a person. In any given situation- are more anxious compared to others.
What is state anxiety?
No matter where your anxiety is on a baseline- its where individuals are more anxious in different situations. Your levels can go up & down.
In the graph - it shows level of state anxiety increased- as during time (2020) there was covid- lockdown- so individuals more anxious. Also anxiety seems to increase in April.
What are clinical anxiety disorders?
Generalized anxiety disorder & specific phobias. OCD etc. In Research- similar patterns have emerged between the 3 (state, trait & clinical disorders)
What Stroop task was used?
The Emotional Stroop (Williams, Mathews & Macleod, 1996)
What happens in the Emotional Stroop Task?
The emotional Stroop effect (ESE) - ink colors of emotion words & colors of neutral words.
The difference shows that people are affected by the emotional content conveyed by the carrier words even though they are irrelevant to the color-naming task at hand.
People are distracted by the meaning of the words- found in disorders including (PTSD, phobias, OCD, panic disorder, Social Phobias, etc)
Watts et al 1986- what did he do & discover?
Naming the colour of threat related words vs spider related words in spider phobics & controls.
e.g. hairy = fairly neutral word- however can be seen as spidery word to individuals scared of spiders.
Watts et at 1986 study
What were the results.
There was interference
Colour naming effect- caused them to be slower (when ink colour was different to the words displayed).
There was interference for emotional words & especially spidery words.
What task was used for Visual Attention?
Dot probe task (words & pictures)
Dot probe task- words
What happens in the task?
Asked to monitor two locations for where something will appear.
Told to look in the center (so equally likely to be above or below the fixation cross)
Just before it appears- you will get something that appears in both locations- threatening word & control word (e.g. failure & feature). Then you make the response- where is the dot? left or right.
If attention went to a threatening word- and dot is in the same location- you will be faster. If dot is on the other side ( by the neutral word)- you will be slower- because your attention is focused on the threat word- and then has to move away from the threat word to the other side.
MacLeod & Mathews 1988
What study did they do?
Study- looks at anxiety related to exams.
Has threatening words -related to exams/ vs threatening words not related to exams (e.g. violence)
What were the results of MacLeod & Mathews 1988 study?
People low in trait anxiety- Started off as nothing going on- they didn’t have a bias for the words.
1 week before exam- showed avoidance towards anxiety related threat words- less attention to words/ tried to block it out.
People with high anxiety- 12 weeks before (not much going on), one week before- they were attending to the words related to examination threat.
Dot probe task- pictures
What happens in these studies?
You get two pictures- often facial expressions (normally real faces) to elicit the brain’s response to emotions.
Often find a fearful face is particularly threatening- more than e.g. an angry face.
In this example- you want to see if the individuals focus is on the angry/ happy face.
Bradley Mogg & miller study 2000
What was their study?
Used a dot probe task to look at attention to different kinds of faces (threat, sad, happy, neutral)
Student sample.
Self reported state anxiety/ depression (POMS)
Bradley Mogg & miller study 2000
What were the findings?
Found for the threatening face- people higher in anxiety showed a bias towards the threatening face.
People high in anxiety- had less of a bias towards happy faces compared to the neutral face. Faces more attuned to negative faces of expression than positive faces.
Dot probe task- covid
What was predicted/ what was found?
Bias- predicted by health anxiety.
Study- 2020 looked at attentional bias to covid pandemic.
Used covid stimuli (e.g. masks) & neutral -
Found people attending more to these stimuli/ has these biases are people who have health anxiety.
Visual attention
Visual search task- what did they do?
Have a picture of something threatening (e.g. boiled egg) & something non threatening (e.g. images of mushrooms).
IDEA- you would be fast to spot the hard boiled egg (threatening image) due to emotional significance.
Visual search task
If you have lots of pictures of boiled eggs and a single image of mushroom- will it be easy to find the image of the mushroom?
Would be harder to find the mushrooms due to hard boiled eggs (distraction) - attracting your attention.
Visual Search
What did Ohman et al 2001 discover?
What are the theoretical issues?
People are faster to detect fear relevant stimuli- especially if they are fearful of them.
Is the attentional bias a cause or effect?
- Does anxiety cause the attentional bias?
- Or does the attentional bias cause the anxiety?
The role of relevance
Dot probe task. What do people say is irrelevant? Is this true?
Say emotional stimuli is irrelevant- but it isn’t if its in the space you have been asked to look at.
The faces are therefore relevant.
The role of relevance- Lichtenstein- Vidne & colleagues 2012, 2017
What did they do in the study?
First- test on non-clinical population.
Task was to say is the picture in the top location or the bottom location.
E.g. if in the picture- the neutral item is a cup- then emotional stimuli in the irrelevant locations had no impact/ effect at all.
When they changed it- so the central pictures were emotional- then the emotional pictures in the periphery (central column) did have a distracting effect.
When you make emotion relevant to what people are doing- they are more likely to be distracted by emotion.
The role of relevance- Lichtenstein- Vidne & colleagues 2012, 2017
What was the follow up study?
Same study- but used patients who were being treated for anxiety disorders.
Found- emotional distraction occurred all the time. This shows relevance is important- but not for people with anxiety disorders.
Is threat just more relevant for people with anxiety disorders?
Are attentional Biases specific to anxiety- Purkis Lester & Field- 2011
What did the study do?
Study asked whether attentional biases- are they something special about emotion/ anxiety- or is it anything relevant/ important to you.
Used visual search task- look for e.g. picture of horse- lots of other pictures - used distractors ( doctor who and spider.)
Had fans of doctor who & people scared of spiders. People were distracted depending on the spiders or doctor who - this questioned whether it’s to do with
Are attentional biases a cause or effect?
Are you showing bias because of anxiety?
Or is the bias making you anxious?
A line of research has tried to change peoples biases
- Probes are consistently presented in the location of threat or non threat items according to training group. (e.g. if dot is consistently with threat- you have bias towards threat. If dot isn’t by threat- you ignore threat & learn its not useful.)
Novel materials tests induced bias.
Attentional bias as a cause
Training as a treatment?
Anxious participants are “trained” to avoid threat pictures/ words.
Probes appear behind non threat stimuli.
People already anxious- have training to avoid threatening pictures/ words using the dot probe. There are some decreases in anxiety here- however not a huge reduction!
Therefore- the extent to which you pay attention to things impacts you anxiety levels.
