Patterns of attention to threat across tasks in behaviorally inhibited children at risk for anxiety

Although attention bias towards threat has been causally implicated in the development and maintenance of fear and anxiety, the expected associations do not appear consistently. Reliance on a single task to capture attention bias, in this case overwhelmingly the dot‐probe task, may contribute to this inconsistency. Comparing across attentional bias measures could help capture patterns of behavior that have implications for anxiety. This study examines the patterns of attentional bias across two related measures in a sample of children at temperamental risk for anxiety. Children (Mean_age = 10.19 ± 0.96) characterized as behaviorally inhibited (N = 50) or non‐inhibited (N = 64) via parent‐report completed the dot‐probe and affective Posner tasks to measure attentional bias to threat. Parent‐report diagnostic interviews assessed children's social anxiety. Behavioral inhibition was not associated with performance in the dot‐probe task, but was associated with increased attentional bias to threat in the affective Posner task. Cross‐task convergence was dependent on temperament, such that attention bias across the two tasks was only related in behaviorally inhibited children. Finally, children who were consistently biased across tasks (showing high or low attentional bias scores in both tasks, rather than high in one but low in the other) had higher levels of anxiety. Convergence across attention bias measures may be dependent on individuals' predispositions (e.g. temperament). Moreover, convergence of attention bias across measures may be a stronger marker of information processing patterns that shape socioemotional outcomes than performance in a single task.     

Psychometric properties of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: Chinese version

The aim of the present study was to develop a Chinese version of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ-C) and to examine its psychometric properties in a sample of Chinese university students. The English version of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire was translated and back-translated prior to its administration to 791 participants recruited from two universities in Changsha, Hunan (China). Internal consistency, test–retest reliability, inter-scale reliability, and factorial validity were analysed. The CERQ-C exhibited: (1) moderate internal consistency (Cronbach's α=.83); (2) a mean inter-class correlation coefficient of .79; (3) a mean inter-item correlation coefficient of .09; and (4) moderate test–retest reliability (.64). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the original CERQ nine-factor model. Finally, with respect to criterion validity, several CERQ-C subscales were uniquely associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety.     

The First Twenty Years of the Will and the Ways: An Examination of Score Reliability Distribution on Snyder’s Dispositional Hope Scale

C. R. Snyder has established hope theory as an important contributor to positive psychology. As the empirical evidence continues to grow, hope researchers need to have confidence that their measures will produce reliable scores. This study presents a reliability generalization on both the internal consistency and test–retest reliability estimates from Snyder’s dispositional hope scale. While over 300 published works were found to have cited the target article 74 present internal consistency scores and 17 reported scores for test–retest reliability. The results of the reliability generalization suggest support for the score reliabilities produced by the dispositional hope scale. However, internal consistency was higher for studies using the eight-item response format (α = 0.82) compared to those using the four-item response format (α = 0.77). Additionally, the test–retest score reliability was high 0.80 with no statistically significant differences by response format. Findings also demonstrated that score reliability estimates were not significantly influenced by the coded sample characteristics.     

A psychometric comparison of anxiety-relevant attention measures

Background and Objectives: Preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control each purportedly play a key role in anxiety disorders. Divergent psychometric properties among attention measures may produce differential detection of anxiety-related associations and treatment-related changes. However, no studies have directly compared the psychometric properties of these attention measures in the same sample.

Design: Eighty-five young adults (M?=?19.41 years, SD?=?1.47, 48 Females) completed a cognitive task battery and a subset of 60 participants (M?=?19.42 years, SD?=?1.48, 33 Females) completed the task battery again approximately two weeks later.

Method: To assess preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control, the cognitive task battery included a dot-probe task, emotion and gender Stroop tasks, and a flanker task. Tasks varied in how attention was directed and if emotional stimuli were included. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were compared across measures.

Results: Within the same sample, internal consistency and reliability differed across attention measures. Explicit attention measures (emotional Stroop and flanker) exhibited stronger internal consistency and greater test-retest reliability compared to implicit measures (dot-probe and gender Stroop).

Conclusions: These results inform clinical research using attention measures to assess anxiety-related differences and treatment response.     

Unreliability of the dot probe task

The dot probe task is a widely used measure of attention allocation to threatening stimuli. The present two studies examine the reliability of different versions of this task using words as well as pictures as stimulus material. Estimates of both internal consistency and retest reliability over one week lead to the conclusion that the dot probe task is a completely unreliable measure of attentional allocation in non‐clinical samples. This unreliability may explain the inconsistent findings for the dot probe task as reported in the literature. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attention to Positive and Negative Social-Evaluative Words: Investigating the Effects of Social Anxiety,Trait Anxiety and Social Threat

The study investigated how attention to negative (threatening) and positive social-evaluative words is affected by social anxiety, trait anxiety and the expectation of social threat. High and low socially anxious individuals carried out a modified dot-probe task either while expecting to give a speech or under non-threatening conditions. High socially anxious individuals showed no significant attentional bias towards or away from social-evaluative words. This result significantly contrasted with an identical design that showed avoidance of emotional faces in high socially anxious participants drawn from the same population (Mansell et al ., 1999). Participants who expected to give a speech showed less attentional avoidance of negative and positive social-evaluative words. High trait anxiety was associated with selective attention to negative relative to positive social-evaluative words, consistent with earlier findings of attention to threat cues in high trait-anxious individuals. Implications for designing attention tasks and attentional bias across different dimensions of anxiety are discussed.     

Early development of visual attention in infants in rural Malawi

Eye tracking research has shown that infants develop a repertoire of attentional capacities during the first year. The majority of studies examining the early development of attention comes from Western, high‐resource countries. We examined visual attention in a heterogeneous sample of infants in rural Malawi (N = 312–376, depending on analysis). Infants were assessed with eye‐tracking‐based tests that targeted visual orienting, anticipatory looking, and attention to faces at 7 and 9 months. Consistent with prior research, infants exhibited active visual search for salient visual targets, anticipatory saccades to predictable events, and a robust attentional bias for happy and fearful faces. Individual variations in these processes had low to moderate odd‐even split‐half and test‐retest reliability. There were no consistent associations between attention measures and gestational age, nutritional status, or characteristics of the rearing environment (i.e., maternal cognition, psychosocial well‐being, socioeconomic status, and care practices). The results replicate infants’ early attentional biases in a large, unique sample, and suggest that some of these biases (e.g., bias for faces) are pronounced in low‐resource settings. The results provided no evidence that the initial manifestation of infants’ attentional capacities is associated with risk factors that are common in low‐resource environments.     

Preliminary acceptability and psychometrics of the infant–toddler social and emotional assessment (ITSEA): A new adult-report questionnaire

The preliminary acceptability, internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and validity of the Infant–Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA), a parent-report questionnaire concerning social-emotional problems and competencies, were examined in a sociodemographically diverse pediatric sample of 214 parents of 12- to 36-month-olds. Results supported the ITSEA's acceptability and preliminary internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and validity. Most parents had a positive response to the ITSEA, found the questions easy to understand, and would consider recommending it to a friend. Confirmatory factor analyses supported 16 conceptually hypothesized problem and competence scales. Most scales had strong internal consistency, good to excellent 2-week test–retest reliability, and moderate 1-year test–retest reliability. Significant correlations among ITSEA scales and parent reports of child temperament and problem behaviors supported the ITSEA's validity. Psychometric findings are viewed as preliminary due to the relatively small sample size. Parents reported greater competence and more maladaptive behaviors in older children than younger children. Consistent with observational studies, boys lagged behind girls in certain parent-reported competencies, including empathy, compliance, prosocial peer interactions, and emotional awareness. Parent reports yielded empirically coherent problem and competence scales and domains, suggesting the early emergence of parental perceptions of organized and differentiated clusters of social-emotional behaviors.     

Children’s social desirability: Effects of test assessment mode

This study examined a recently developed short version of the Children’s Social Desirability (CSD-S) scale with 157 fourth-grade children. Of interest was (a) whether one-month test–retest reliability would vary as a function of test assessment mode (interview or classroom), gender, race, SES, and BMI percentile, and (b) whether the degree of social desirability would vary as a function of these same variables. The CSD-S scale showed good test–retest reliability for both interview and classroom assessment modes (.85 and .83, respectively). Internal consistency also was good (first interview administration = .84; first classroom administration = .81). Reliability was good and did not vary significantly over assessment mode or any child subgroup variables, suggesting that the CSD-S scale is appropriate for general use. The interview mode elicited significantly more socially desirable answers than did the classroom mode. Social desirability did not differ across child subgroups. Some of these findings were examined, and replicated, on another sample. Thus, the CSD-S scale may be used with diverse groups of children to (a) reliably assess a social desirability bias that may systematically bias other self-reports of interest to researchers and (b) examine individual differences in degree of social desirability.     

Anxiety and attention to threatening pictures

Previous research using attentional search tasks has revealed an anxiety-related bias favouring attention to threatening words when they are presented simultaneously with emotionally neutral words. In Experiment 1, using a similar task, a related effect was found here with emotionally threatening pictures. When pictures were used as location cues in a second experiment, high-trait anxious individuals were slower than less anxious controls when responding to targets requiring attentional disengagement from threat, and they were slower in general with pictures judged to be highly threatening. In a third experiment using the same task but with a longer cue exposure, a related disengagement difficulty occurred across both groups, although the more general slowing with severe threat was again confined to the anxious group. We conclude that attentional bias involves both a specific difficulty in disengaging attention from the location of any threat and a more general interference effect that is related to threat level.     

A review and analysis of research on the test–retest reliability of professional judgment

This paper analyzes existing research on the test–retest reliability of human judgment, i.e. the extent to which a judge makes identical judgments when presented with identical stimuli on two occasions. Only research involving professional judges who make experimental judgments in a reasonable analog of their everyday experience is included. Studies of both internal consistency reliability and temporal stability reliability are analyzed (where the former refers to the inclusion of repeat stimuli in the same experimental session, and the latter refers to the repeating of the experimental task from a few days to several months later). It is found that (1) the test–retest reliability literature is concentrated in four substantive judgment areas (medicine/psychology, meteorology, human resources management, and business), (2) the literature is extremely variable in terms of research approach/design, the determinants or correlates of test–retest reliability that have been studied, and the quality of the execution and analysis, and (3) mean test–retest reliability differs across both substantive judgment areas and the internal consistency versus temporal stability distinction. An inescapable conclusion from the analysis is that our knowledge of this fundamental property of human judgment is quite meager. Therefore, the paper concludes with suggestions about future research that would address test–retest reliability more systematically. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attentional biases to internal and external sources of potential threat in social anxiety

D. M. Clark and A. Wells (1995) proposed that a shift of attention inward toward interoceptive information is a central feature of social phobia. However, few studies have examined attentional biases toward internal physiological cues in social phobia. The current experiment assessed whether socially anxious individuals exhibit an attentional bias (a) toward cues for an internal source of potential threat (heart-rate information), (b) toward cues for an external source of potential threat (threatening faces) or (c) both. Ninety-one participants who were selected to form extreme groups based on a social anxiety screening measure performed a dot-probe task to assess location of attention. Results showed that socially anxious participants exhibited an attentional bias toward cues of internal, but not external, sources of potential threat.     

Yale Children's Inventory (YCI): An instrument to assess children with attentional deficits and learning disabilities I. Scale development and psychometric properties

The Yale Children's Inventory (YCI), a parent based rating scale, and the scales derived from it have been developed to identify and measure multiple dimensions of learning disabilities with particular emphasis on attentional deficits. Scale construction was based on factor analytic procedures. Measures of internal consistency, test retest reliability, and coefficients of congruence support the reliability and stability of the 11 scales. A discriminant function classified normal and learning disabled children with a relatively high rate of accuracy. The relationship and content of the three relevant YCI scales were compared to the DSM-III diagnostic categories for ADD. As operationalized, DSM-III criteria for hyperactivity formed a cohesive factor, while criteria for attention and impulsivity were not distinguishable from each other since they loaded together on a single factor. In contrast, the equivalent YCI scales for attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity were found to be distinct.     

Assessment of Time Management Skills (ATMS): A Practice-Based Outcome Questionnaire

This study assessed test–retest reliability and internal consistency of the Assessment of Time Management Skills (ATMS), a self-report questionnaire designed to assess awareness and use time management strategies to plan and manage daily life tasks. Participants included 18 to 65 year-old people (N = 241) from the general population. The questionnaire's content validity was established. The tool demonstrated good internal consistency (α = 0.86). Test–retest reliability for the score revealed a Pearson Coefficient of Correlation (PCC) r = 0.89. The ATMS may be a useful tool for evaluating the effectiveness of rehabilitation designed to improve time management skills.     

Attentional bias during emotional processing: evidence from an emotional flanker task using IAPS

Attention is biased towards threat-related stimuli. In three experiments, we investigated the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this processing bias. An emotional flanker task simultaneously presented affective or neutral pictures from the international affective picture system database either as central response-relevant stimuli or surrounding response-uninformative flankers. Participants’ response times to central stimuli was measured. The attentional bias was observed when stimuli were presented either for 1500?ms (Experiment 1) or 500?ms (Experiment 2). The threat-related attentional bias held regardless of the stimuli competing for attention even when presentation time was further reduced to 200?ms (Experiment 3). The results indicate that automatic and controlled mechanisms may interact to modulate the orientation of attention to threat. The data presented here shed new light on the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this long investigated by still largely unknown processing bias.     

Selective attention in social phobia and the moderating effect of a concurrent depressive disorder

Studies using the modified Stroop colour naming task have provided results consistent with the hypothesis that social phobia is associated with an attentional bias towards negative social-evaluative words. However, these results could also have arisen as a consequence of non-attentional processes. For this reason, the present study uses a modified version of MacLeod et al.'s (J. Abnorm. Psychol. 95 (1986) 15) dot-probe task, which provides a more direct measure of attention. Patients with social phobia (n=28), patients with social phobia and a concurrent depressive disorder (n=33), and non-patients (n=40) were presented with word pairs each consisting of a neutral word and a threat word. The results indicated that patients with social phobia show an attentional bias towards social-threat words while non-patients tend to avoid social-threat words. Patients with social phobia and a concurrent depressive disorder behaved like non-patients, indicating that concurrent depression abolishes the attentional bias. Physical threat words were also included in the study. The main analysis indicated that social phobia is also associated with an attentional bias to physical threat. However, a post hoc analysis (which requires replication) suggested that the physical threat bias might have arisen because some social phobia patients also had another anxiety disorder in which physical concerns are likely to have been prominent. Overall, the results emphasise the importance of assessing comorbidity when investigating attentional biases.     

Threat ≠ prevention,challenge ≠ promotion: The impact of threat,challenge and regulatory focus on attention to negative stimuli

The purpose of the current experiment was to distinguish between the impact of strategic and affective forms of gain- and loss-related motivational states on the attention to negative stimuli. On the basis of the counter-regulation principle and regulatory focus theory, we predicted that individuals would attend more to negative than to neutral stimuli in a prevention focus and when experiencing challenge, but not in a promotion focus and under threat. In one experiment (N = 88) promotion, prevention, threat, or challenge states were activated through a memory task, and a subsequent dot probe task was administered. As predicted, those in the prevention focus and challenge conditions had an attentional bias towards negative words, but those in promotion and threat conditions did not. These findings provide support for the idea that strategic mindsets (e.g., regulatory focus) and hot emotional states (e.g., threat vs. challenge) differently affect the processing of affective stimuli.     

A review of existing measures of attentional biases in body image and eating disorders research

Cognitive theories emphasise the important role of attentional biases in the development and maintenance of body image issues and eating pathology. A wealth of research has been conducted to examine attentional biases toward body‐related information among individuals with eating pathology. However, there is considerable variability in the methods that have been used to measure attention and, importantly, these methods tap into different attentional processes. Given the multifaceted nature of attention, it is important for researchers to select the right tools to test their hypotheses. This review critically evaluates the attentional measures that have been used in previous research, primarily the modified Stroop task, dot probe task, visual search task, and eyetracking. The strengths and limitations of each measure will be discussed in order to provide a guide for researchers to further investigate the attentional mechanisms underlying body image issues and eating disorders. Overall, we recommend that researchers use a combination of eyetracking technology and specific reaction‐time measures that target the specific attentional mechanism of interest.