Lecture 7 - attention biases: the role of mechanisms Flashcards
what are mechanisms
factors that are responsible for attentional bias
function is to explain why emotionally disturbed people selectively attend to emotional stimuli
help to identify in what person, in what mood, in what situation or following what event is attentional bias shown
why is there an emphasis on mechanisms for understanding attentional bias
criticial for identifying targets for intervention
key for developing, testing and refining theoretical frameworks for explaining attentional bias
eg - Beck’s schema theory and attentional bias
steps involved in identifying mechanisms
look at convergence of bias manifestation across different paradigms - eg modified stroop, dot probe
develop explanatory frameworks, test and refine them
move from single mediator to interactions of factors
why is it difficult to study mechanismsm underpinning attentional bias
different forms of attentional bias - facilitated attention, disengagement difficulties and attentional avoidance
wide range of mechanisms - neural, cognitive, personality
different mechanisms operate at different stages of information processing (automatic vs srategic)
all three factors must be considered and complex interaction
name three types of attentional bias
facilitated attention
difficulties in disengagement
attentional avoidance
explain facilitated attention
ease with which attention is draw to a stimulus - evidence is mixed but may be due to moderating variables
explain difficulties in disengagement
degree to which threat captures attention and imparis switching attention away from threat to another stimulus, alot of evidence from the visual search task - strong evidence for this bias
explain attentional avoidance
attention preferentially allocated to locations opposite of the threat, indicating avoidance of threat - observeed using dot probe task and at long stimulu intervals
are these processes automatic of strategic?
- threat detection
- attentional avoidance
- attentional disengagement
automatic
strategic
both strategic and automatic
how can attentional bias mechanisms explain the dissociation between memory and attentional processes
activation giving rise to attention bias dies away before mnemonic processes begin
type of activation involved in attentional bias different to that involved in explicit mnemonic encoding
factors that mediate the mechanisms
threat detection mechanism underpins facilitated attention - neurally centered around the amygdala
attentional control underlies difficulty in disengagement
emotion reglation goals underlie attentional avoidance
attention control and emotion regulation controlled by prefrontal cortex
relationship between paradigms ad mechanisms: attnetional bias in anxiety
must have tasks that differentiate between different types of attentional bias
spatial cuing task - assesses both facilitation and disengagement
what mechanism is most robust for explaining attneitonal bias in anxiety
threat detection mechanism that operates automatically and contributes to facilitated attention to threat
what mechanisms for attentional bias in anxiety have less empirical support
mechanisms accounting for disengagement from threat
mechanisms accounting for avoidance of threat
explain cognitive motivational model
vulnerability to anxiety stems from a lower threshold of appraising threat
bias in the direction of attention deployment is less crucial
neutral material is judged as having a higher subjective threat value by high vs low anxious individuals
everyone orients to high threat stimuli as this is functional from an evoluntionary perspective
integrates multiple frameowkrs
