Attachment and emotional memory: investigating the source and extent of avoidant memory impairments

Attachment avoidance has been associated with impairments in memory for material with emotional, attachment-related themes (e.g., loss). In the present study the author investigated the source and extent of these memory deficits by examining working memory capacity for attachment-related and nonattachment-related material. Avoidance was associated with deficits in working memory for positive and negative attachment-related stimuli. However, avoidance was unrelated to working memory capacity for nonattachment-related stimuli, both emotional and nonemotional. These findings are consistent with the proposal that avoidant individuals defensively limit the processing of potentially distressing information. Attachment anxiety was unrelated to working memory capacity across word type. Implications of the findings for defensive strategies and emotional memory are discussed.     

回避性依恋和注意偏向：刺激普遍性与刺激特定性

采用工作记忆算式-词对广度任务,通过87名大学生探索依恋回避倾向性与注意的关系。研究发现：依恋回避与三类词的工作记忆成绩呈负相关;工作记忆广度类型、词类型主效应显著;工作记忆广度类型与词类型交互作用显著。结果表明：回避性依恋者具有回避性注意偏向;回避性注意偏向既有刺激普遍性,又有刺激特定性,依恋性刺激比中性刺激更容易在信息加工早期被防御性地排除;回避性注意偏向具有调节情绪的功能性价值。为去激活策略情绪调节观提供了跨文化研究证据。     

Attentive processing of threat and adult attachment: a dot-probe study

We examined selective attention to threat stimuli as a function of individual differences in adult attachment. Participants completed a dot-probe task in which a general threat word, attachment-related threat word, general positive or attachment-related positive word was presented together with a neutral word. Results showed that attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with an attentional bias away from attachment threat words. This attentional avoidance effect was best predicted by the interaction between attachment anxiety and avoidance and not by their unique main effects. The findings are discussed in terms of attachment theory and its relation to attentional biases observed in psychopathology.     

Individual differences in emotional memory: adult attachment and long-term memory for child sexual abuse

In the present study, attachment-related differences in long-term memory for a highly emotional life event, child sexual abuse (CSA), were investigated. Participants were 102 documented CSA victims whose cases were referred for prosecution approximately 14 years earlier. Consistent with the proposal that avoidant individuals defensively regulate the processing of potentially distressing information (Bowlby, 1980), attachment avoidance was negatively associated with memory for particularly severe CSA incidents. This finding was not mediated by the extent to which participants reported talking about the abuse after it occurred, although post abuse discussion did enhance long-term memory. In addition, accuracy was positively associated with maternal support following the abuse and extent of CSA-related legal involvement. Attachment anxiety was unrelated to memory accuracy, regardless of abuse severity. Implications of the findings for theories of avoidant defensive strategies and emotional memory are discussed.     

The experience of positive emotion is associated with the automatic processing of positive emotional words

The current study examines the relationship between attention bias for positive emotional words and self-reported emotional experience. Previous research suggests that the experience of positive emotion momentarily broadens cognitive processes, potentially allowing individuals to build an array of enduring personal resources. However, it is unknown whether the experience of positive emotion also broadens emotional information processing. Participants included 60 healthy undergraduate students who completed measures of psychopathology, self-reported emotional experience, and an emotional Stroop task designed to measure attentional bias to positive and negative emotional information. Results indicate significant associations between reaction times for high-intensity happiness words and self-reported high levels of positive emotion and low levels of negative emotions. These associations were not present for low intensity happiness words. Findings suggest that individuals who experience high levels of positive emotion and low levels of negative emotion demonstrate an attention bias for positive information and, from an information processing perspective, provide insight into the manner in which positive emotions broaden cognitive processes.     

Testing a dual-process model of avoidant defenses

Research suggests that the defensive strategy used by people who score high on attachment-related avoidance when they encounter interpersonal threats involves two stages: automatic vigilance followed by effortful avoidance. In two studies we varied stimulus exposure times and cognitive load to determine how attention is regulated by avoidant individuals. Results indicate that avoidant individuals were vigilant toward contempt faces when the faces were presented for 100 ms but quickly disengaged from them when the faces were presented for 750 ms. Moreover, avoidant participants could disengage from contempt faces presented for 750 ms while rehearsing a simple 1-digit number, but not when rehearsing a 7-digit number, suggesting that avoidant disengagement is a cognitively effortful process. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Attachment insecurity and strategies for regulation: when emotion triggers attention

Attachment-related strategies are thought to be critical for regulation and processing of emotional information. This study examined biases in selective attention to emotional stimuli as a function of insecure attachment. Participants searched for a single target image preceded by to-be-ignored distracters depicting emotional images varying in valence and arousal. Results revealed that, in general, negative distracters affected accuracy levels, and that the anxious attached participants showed a clear interference of the emotional distracters. In contrast, the avoidant group evinced a higher control on such interference. In addition, arousal ratings to distracter images indicated superior emotional activation only for anxious attached participants. Consistent with the evolutionary-based attachment theory threat-related stimuli prompted priority attentional responses. Present findings are in line with evidence showing the deployment of distinct strategies in insecurely attached individuals for the regulation of attention to emotional information.     

Emotional information processing in repressors: The vigilance–avoidance theory

A vigilance–avoidance theory of the repressive coping style (low trait anxiety and high defensiveness) is presented. The new theory attempts to account for several key findings, including the discrepancy between low self-reported anxiety and high behavioural and physiological indicators of anxiety shown by individuals with a repressive coping style. According to the theory, repressors have an initial rapid vigilant response triggering behavioural and physiological responses and involving attentional and interpretive biases to self-relevant threat stimuli. These biases may be based on negative self-relevant schematic information. This initial vigilant stage is followed by an avoidance stage involving avoidant cognitive biases (attentional, interpretive, and memory) that inhibit the conscious experience of anxiety. Future research should examine systematically the time course of repressors’ reactions to threatening and non-threatening stimuli.     

不安全依恋者注意偏向的形成机制及神经基础

不安全依恋者的注意偏向是指依恋焦虑和回避个体对依恋信息产生或趋近或回避的注意偏好, 这一注意偏好使得个体形成了处理与依恋对象关系的特殊认知机制：依恋回避个体偏好采用防御性机制, 倾向于回避对依恋信息的注意; 依恋焦虑个体偏好采用夸大性机制, 倾向于夸大威胁性信息, 因而会积极寻求与依恋对象的亲近。不安全依恋者注意偏向的差异主要体现在情绪信息、痛觉感受和工作记忆三个方面; 加工阶段特征主要涉及P1、N1波等代表的注意自动加工和LPP波代表的注意控制加工; 脑网络上主要包括两个子网络, 即负责情绪评估的边缘系统和负责情绪调节的以前额叶为代表的神经网络。未来研究中更应该关注刺激物的生态效度, 检验依恋系统是否激活, 不安全依恋者注意偏向的自动加工和控制加工阶段的关系, 不安全依恋者注意偏向产生的分子遗传机制以及注意偏向的跨文化研究。     

Attentional bias towards angry faces in trait-reappraisal

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies differ in when and how they influence emotion experience, expression, and concomitant cognition. However, no study to date has directly compared cognition in individuals who have a clear disposition for either cognitive or behavioural ER strategies. The present study compared selective attention to angry faces in groups of high trait-suppressors (people who are hiding emotional reactions in response to emotional challenge) and high trait-reappraisers (people who cognitively reinterpret emotional events). Since reappraisers are also low trait-anxious and suppressors are high trait-anxious, high and low anxious control groups, both being low in trait-ER, were also included. Attention to angry faces was assessed using an emotional dot-probe task. Trait-reappraisers and high-anxious individuals both showed attentional biases towards angry faces. Trait-reappraisers’ vigilance for angry faces was significantly more pronounced compared to both trait-suppressors and low anxious controls. We suggest that threat prioritization in high trait-reappraisal may allow deeper cognitive processing of threat information without being associated with psychological maladjustment.     

Examining the role of emotional avoidance in the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity and worry

A growing body of literature suggests that worry is a cognitive activity functioning to avoid unpleasant internal experiences such as negative thoughts, emotions, and somatic responses. Given the highly aversive internal events associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), individuals experiencing PTSD symptoms following exposure to a traumatic event may be particularly motivated to engage in avoidant regulation strategies such as worry. Surprisingly, however, few studies to date have examined the relationship between PTSD and worry as well as potential factors that might explain this association. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the association between PTSD symptom severity and worry and the extent to which emotional avoidance explains this relationship. To this end, 207 college students with a history of traumatic exposure (meeting Criterion A for a PTSD diagnosis) completed a series of questionnaires assessing history of exposure to potentially traumatic events, PTSD symptom severity, emotional avoidance tendencies, and worry. Results demonstrated that PTSD symptom severity was positively associated with worry and emotional avoidance. Further, emotional avoidance was found to fully account for this relationship, providing support for the proposed emotionally avoidant function of worry. The implications of these findings for future research and the treatment of worry among individuals with a history of traumatic exposure are discussed.     

Emotional valence of spoken words influences the spatial orienting of attention

The influence of the affective content of speech on the spatial orienting of auditory attention was examined by adapting the dot probe task. Two words, one of which was emotional in one quarter of the trials, were played simultaneously from a left- and a right-located loudspeaker, respectively, and followed (or not) by a lateralized beep to be detected (Experiments 1 and 2) or localized (Experiment 3). Taboo words induced attentional biases towards their spatial location in all experiments, as did negative words in Experiment 3, but not positive words. Thus, in audition, the identification of an emotional word automatically activates the information about its spatial origin. Moreover, for both word types, attentional biases were only observed when the emotional word was presented on the participant's right side, suggesting that the dominant left hemisphere processing of words constrains the occurrence of spatial congruency effects.     

Beneath the veil of thought suppression: Attentional bias and depression risk

Although cognitive theory predicts that depression-prone individuals possess negative information-processing biases, the reliable detection of this type of cognitive vulnerability has proved difficult. The present study tested the idea that depression-relevant, cognitive biases are often elusive because at-risk individuals actively try to suppress depressive thinking. The study employed a novel measure of information processing that involves the identification of words imbedded in a letter grid. A cognitive load - designed to disrupt thought suppression - caused a negative attentional shift among individuals at risk for depression (because of a previous episode), leading them to identify negative words at a rate equivalent to currently dysphoric participants. The hypothesised role of mental control was further supported by the fact that the load-related, attentional shift was strongly associated with chronic thought suppression.     

Is there a mutual relationship between opposite attentional biases underlying anxiety?

Current models that account for attentional processes in anxiety have proposed that high-trait anxious individuals are characterized by a hypervigilant-avoidant pattern of attentional biases to threat. We adopted a laboratory conditioning procedure to induce concomitant hypervigilance and avoidance to threat, emphasizing a putative relationship between lower-level reactive and upper-level controlled attentional mechanisms as the core account of attentional processes involved in the development and maintenance of anxiety. Eighty high- and low-trait anxious participants underwent Pavlovian conditioning to a human face. Eye tracking was used to monitor attentional changes to the conditioned stimulus (CS+) face and the neutral stimulus (CS-) face, presented at 200, 500, and 800 ms durations. The high-anxious participants developed the expected attentional bias toward the CS+ at 200 ms presentation time and attentional avoidance at 500 and 800 ms durations. Hypervigilance to aversive stimuli at 200 ms and later avoidance to the same stimuli at 500 and 800 ms were associated with higher levels of galvanic skin conductance to the CS+. The low-anxious individuals developed the opposite attentional pattern with an initial tendency to orient attention away from the aversive stimuli in the 200 ms condition and to orient attention toward aversive stimuli in the remaining time. The differential modulation between hypervigilance and avoidance elicited in the two groups by the conditioning procedure suggests that vulnerability to anxiety is characterized by a latent relationship between diverse attentional mechanisms. Within this relationship, hypervigilance and avoidance to threat operate at different stages of information processing suggesting fuzzy boundaries between early reactive and later-strategic processing of threat.     

Avoidant attachment and hemispheric lateralisation of the processing of attachment‐ and emotion‐related words

Studies of adult attachment indicate that intimacy avoidance is associated with general negative emotionality and withdrawal from potentially positive aspects of social relations. Such emotional negativity and withdrawal motivation have been connected in psychophysiological studies with the right frontal lobe of the brain, whereas the left frontal lobe specialises in emotional positivity and approach behaviour. In the present study we used a divided visual field task to investigate hemispheric asymmetries in making decisions about the positivity or negativity of attachment‐ and emotion‐related words, as well as various kinds of control words. We found that more avoidant individuals made more errors when judging positive attachment‐related words presented to the right hemisphere. The findings are discussed in terms of possible effects of attachment history on the way attachment‐related information is processed in the brain.     

Anxiety sensitivity, conscious awareness and selective attentional biases in children

The current study investigated whether physical anxiety sensitivity (AS) is associated with selective attentional biases to affective stimuli in children. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine the deployment of attention towards words pertaining to anxiety symptomatology, socially threatening words, and positive words, in samples of 8-10-year-old children. Word pairs were presented under both masked and unmasked conditions. Irrespective of masking, children high in physical AS displayed an attentional vigilance for emotional words relative to neutral words, whereas those low in physical AS displayed a relative avoidance of such material. The results of this study are interesting as they not only suggest the presence of automatic AS-related biases in childhood, but that this is a general emotionality bias rather than one related to specific anxiety-related stimuli.     

Biases in Visual Attention in Depressed and Nondepressed Individuals

Abstract

The present study utilised a cognitive paradigm to examine attentional biases in mildly depressed persons. Twelve depressed and 12 nondepressed subjects completed an attentional task similar to that employed by MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata (1986). A tachistiscope was used to present subjects with a series of word pairs, each with one word printed above the other. Three types of word pairs were presented: manic-neutral, depressed-neutral, and manic-depressed. Selective attention to one member of a word pair was assessed using ac perception task. Based on cognitive models of depression, it was hypothesised that the depressed subjects would attend more to depressed-content words than to manic- or neutral-content words, whereas the nondepressed subjects would not exhibit any attentional biases. In contrast to these predictions, analyses indicated that whereas the depressed subjects attended equally to depressed-, manic-, and neutral-content words, the nondepressed subjects attended more to manic-content than they did to neutral- or depressed-content words. These results add support to the documentation of evenhandedness in the cognitive functioning of depressed subjects, and of self-sewing biases in nondepressed subjects. The present findings are discussed in terms of a zoom lens model of attention, in which depressed persons attempt to exhaustively process their sensory world, but with a loss of attentional resolution. In contrast, nondepressed individuals attempt to process a more limited portion of their sensory world, but with an increase in attentional power. Finally, directions for future research in this area are offered.     

The Influence of Anticipatory Processing on Attentional Biases in Social Anxiety

Research on cognitive theories of social anxiety disorder (SAD) has identified individual processes that influence this condition (e.g., cognitive biases, repetitive negative thinking), but few studies have attempted to examine the interaction between these processes. For example, attentional biases and anticipatory processing are theoretically related and have been found to influence symptoms of SAD, but they rarely have been studied together (i.e., Clark & Wells, 1995). Therefore, the goal of the current study was to examine the effect of anticipatory processing on attentional bias for internal (i.e., heart rate feedback) and external (i.e., emotional faces) threat information. A sample of 59 participants high (HSA) and low (LSA) in social anxiety symptoms engaged in a modified dot-probe task prior to (Time 1) and after (Time 2) an anticipatory processing or distraction task. HSAs who anticipated experienced an increase in attentional bias for internal information from Time 1 to Time 2, whereas HSAs in the distraction condition and LSAs in either condition experienced no changes. No changes in biases were found for HSAs for external biases, but LSAs who engaged in the distraction task became less avoidant of emotional faces from Time 1 to Time 2. This suggests that anticipatory processing results in an activation of attentional biases for physiological information as suggested by Clark and Wells.     

Influence of emotional task relevancy on the temporal dynamic of attentional bias in people with high-trait anxiety

ABSTRACT

It is unknown whether high-trait anxiety (HTA) individuals show facilitated attention or impaired attentional disengagement. In the present study, we have manipulated emotion and task relevance to explore the temporal dynamic of attentional bias in an HTA group via emotional attentional blink (EAB) and emotion-induced blindness (EIB). The results showed that the attentional blink effect was greater in the negative compared to neutral condition. When emotional stimulation was task-irrelevant at lag6, this enhanced effect was only present for the HTA group, indicating impaired attentional disengagement. However, when emotional stimulation was task-relevant at lag4, the enhanced attentional blink was absent for HTA but still present for LTA until lag8, suggesting facilitated attention for HTA. Thus, task relevancy of emotional distractor appears to influence attention biases in HTA individuals. In addition, individual characteristics modulate the magnitude and time window of the attentional blink in the context of EIB and EAB tasks.     

Biases in orienting and maintenance of attention among weight dissatisfied women: an eye-movement study

Despite evidence indicating fatness and thinness information are processed differently among weight-preoccupied and eating disordered individuals, the exact nature of these attentional biases is not clear. In this research, eye movement (EM) tracking assessed biases in specific component processes of visual attention (i.e., orientation, detection, maintenance and disengagement of gaze) in relation to body-related stimuli among 20 weight dissatisfied (WD) and 20 weight satisfied young women. Eye movements were recorded while participants completed a dot-probe task that featured fatness-neutral and thinness-neutral word pairs. Compared to controls, WD women were more likely to direct their initial gaze toward fatness words, had a shorter mean latency of first fixation on both fatness and thinness words, had longer first fixation on fatness words but shorter first fixation on thinness words, and shorter total gaze duration on thinness words. Reaction time data showed a maintenance bias towards fatness words among the WD women. In sum, results indicated WD women show initial orienting, speeded detection and initial maintenance biases towards fat body words in addition to a speeded detection – avoidance pattern of biases in relation to thin body words. In sum, results highlight the importance of the utility of EM-tracking as a means of identifying subtle attentional biases among weight dissatisfied women drawn from a non-clinical setting and the need to assess attentional biases as a dynamic process.