焦虑和抑郁对正负性注意偏向的影响：注意控制的中介作用

采用状态-特质焦虑量表、流调抑郁量表、注意控制量表和正负性信息注意量表,对481名在校大学生进行调查研究,考察了焦虑、抑郁对注意偏向的影响,并探讨了注意控制在其中的中介作用。研究发现：（1）正性注意偏向与注意控制呈正相关,与状态焦虑、特质焦虑和流调抑郁呈负相关;负性注意偏向与注意控制呈负相关,与状态焦虑、特质焦虑和流调抑郁呈正相关。（2）特质焦虑、注意集中、注意转移可显著预测正性注意偏向,状态焦虑、流调抑郁和注意集中则显著预测负性注意偏向。（3）注意转移和注意集中中介了状态焦虑、特质焦虑、流调抑郁和正、负性注意偏向间的关系。研究提示注意控制是一个重要的保护性因素,可缓解或消除焦虑和抑郁对注意偏向的负面影响。     

The role of rumination,attentional biases and stress in psychological distress

This experimental study examines the relationship between rumination and attentional bias. Additionally, the study aims to determine, within a diathesis‐stress framework, whether rumination or attentional bias (or both) can prospectively predict psychological distress. Eighty‐one participants completed selected measures of rumination and psychological distress at time one, in addition to experimental manipulations of rumination and mood, and measures of mood and attentional bias at time two. Seventy‐three participants (90% follow‐up) completed final measures of stress and psychological distress approximately 3 weeks later. In combination with negative mood, inducing rumination decreased positive attentional bias, whilst inducing distraction increased positive attentional bias. Rumination and stress interacted to predict change in psychological distress. Negative attentional bias showed a trend towards interacting with rumination and stress to predict dysphoria. The findings supported the proposed diathesis‐stress models. In addition, a causal relationship between rumination and positive attentional bias has been empirically established for the first time.     

Vigilance for threat: effects of anxiety and defensiveness

Eysenck’s (1997) theory that attentional biases for threat vary as an interactive function of trait anxiety and defensiveness was tested using a visual probe task. Two stimulus exposure conditions were used to explore a secondary issue concerning attentional allocation over time. Results indicated that, among high trait anxious participants, only those with low levels of defensiveness showed vigilance for threatening faces presented for 500 ms. They also showed an attentional preference for neutral faces, relative to happy faces, irrespective of exposure condition. This pattern was reversed in high trait anxious participants with high levels of defensiveness, who showed an attentional bias towards happy faces (relative to neutral faces) under both exposure conditions. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for (a) the significance of measures of defensiveness for the conceptualization of high trait anxious individuals, and (b) the status of anxiety-related biases at different stages of information processing.     

Brooding rumination and attentional biases in currently non-depressed individuals: an eye-tracking study

Both rumination and attentional biases have been proposed as key components of the RDoC Negative Valence Systems construct of Loss. Although theorists have proposed that rumination, particularly brooding rumination, should be associated with increased sustained attention to depression-relevant information, it is not clear whether this link would be observed in a non-depressed sample or whether it is specific to brooding versus reflective rumination. To address these questions, the current study examined the link between brooding rumination and attentional biases in a sample of non-depressed individuals (n?=?105). Attentional biases were assessed using eye tracking during a passive viewing task in which participants were presented with 2?×?2 arrays of angry, happy, sad, and neutral faces. In line with predictions, higher levels of brooding rumination were associated with greater sustained attention to sad faces and less sustained attention to happy faces. These results remained significant after controlling for participants’ prior history of major depression and current nonclinical level of depressive symptoms, suggesting that the link between brooding rumination and attentional biases is at least partially independent of current or past depression.     

The interaction effect of attentional bias and attentional control on dispositional anxiety among adolescents

Research has shown that children and adolescents with attentional control deficits tend to have high anxiety and exhibit threat‐related selective attentional bias. This study aimed to investigate how positive and negative attentional biases would interact with attentional control on dispositional anxiety. One hundred and twenty participants aged 18 years of age or younger participated in a visual dot‐probe task to measure their attentional bias and completed psychological questionnaires to measure their trait anxiety, and attentional control. Mean reaction times to the probe in milliseconds were used to measure attentional bias. Overall, our participants showed a bigger tendency towards attending to positive emotional stimuli than to negative emotional stimuli. Adolescents with high dispositional anxiety showed poorer attentional control. Regression analyses showed that attentional control interact with negative attentional bias to affect anxiety. For participants with high attentional control, higher negative attentional bias was associated with lower trait anxiety. Trait anxiety was not related to negative attentional bias for participants with low attentional control. Positive attentional bias showed no significant relationship with dispositional anxiety, either alone or in interaction with attentional control. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are also discussed.     

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.     

Rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus in depressed patients

Rumination has been proposed as a cognitive risk factor for the onset and maintenance of depression. In parallel, mindfulness interventions have shown to reduce the risk for recurrence of depressive episodes. This study aimed to investigate effects of short periods of induced rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus on sad mood in depressed patients and to assess possible moderator effects of habitual variables on respective mood changes. Seventy-six depressed patients 3.5 years after discharge from inpatient treatment were subjected to negative mood induction and subsequently randomly assigned to a rumination, distraction, or mindful self-focus induction. Habitual aspects of rumination, distraction, and mindfulness were assessed by questionnaires. Compared to rumination, the induction of a mindful self-focus and of distraction showed clear beneficial effects on the course of negative mood. While habitual distraction predicted better mood outcomes across all conditions, patients high in habitual mindfulness tended to show stronger negative mood reduction specifically after the induction of a mindful self-focus. This study indicates that - similar to distraction - an experimentally induced mindful self-focus is able to reduce negative mood in depressed patients. Implications regarding possible subgroups of patients who might particularly benefit from mindfulness-based interventions are discussed.     

Time course of attentional bias for fear-relevant pictures in spider-fearful individuals

The time course of attentional biases for spider stimuli was assessed in two groups of individuals with high or low levels of spider fear. Pairs of photographs of spiders and cats were presented in a visual probe task with three exposure durations: 200, 500 and 2000 ms. Results indicated greater attentional bias for spider stimuli in high fear, than in low fear, individuals in the 200 ms condition. The attentional bias in the high fear group significantly reduced as stimulus exposure duration increased, with no significant biases found in the longer exposure conditions. Results support the view that high fear is associated with an enhanced initial attentional bias for fear-relevant stimuli, but that this attentional bias is not maintained over time.     

Rumination and Impaired Cortisol Recovery Following a Social Stressor in Adolescent Depression

Response styles theory promotes rumination as a central cognitive construct driving negative mood and depression, and past research suggests that at least part of the mechanism driving rumination’s depressogenic effect is through inhibiting the individual’s ability to shift attentional focus away from negative environmental stimuli. In the current study, we hypothesized that high trait rumination would be associated with impaired recovery of the body’s biological response to psychological stress. In a community sample of depressed (n?=?31) and non-depressed (n?=?33) adolescents we assessed rumination and the more adaptive trait of distraction and problem-solving with the Children’s Response Styles Questionnaire (CRSQ; Abela 2000), and diagnostic status was confirmed using the Child and Adolescent Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS; Kaufman et al. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 36:980–988, 1997). Participants completed the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum et al. Neuropsychobiology 28:76–81, 1993), and the focus of our analyses was the change in salivary cortisol concentration between peak cortisol output (25 min post-stressor) and a sample taken during the “Recovery” period 65 minutes post-stressor. Consistent with the predictions of response style theory, among the depressed adolescents only, high trait rumination was associated with delayed post-stressor cortisol recovery, whereas high trait distraction and problem-solving was associated with more rapid recovery. In contrast, response styles were not associated with cortisol recovery in the non-depressed group. These findings implicate impaired post-stress cortisol recovery as a potential mechanism underlying the pathological effect of rumination on the development and maintenance of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).     

Selective attention to threat: A test of two cognitive models of anxiety

Two experiments evaluated differential predictions from two cognitive formulations of anxiety. According to one view, attentional biases for threat reflect vulnerability to anxiety; and as threat inputs increase, high trait anxious individuals should become more vigilant, and low trait individuals more avoidant, of threat (Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1988, 1997). However, according to a “cognitive-motivational” view, trait anxiety influences the appraisal of stimulus threat value, rather than the direction of attentional bias, and both high and low trait anxious individuals should exhibit greater vigilance for high rather than mild threat stimuli (Mogg & Bradley, 1998). To test these predictions, two experiments examined the effect of manipulating stimulus threat value on the direction of attentional bias. The stimuli included high threat and mild threat pictorial scenes presented in a probe detection task. Results from both studies indicated a significant main effect of stimulus threat value on attentional bias, as there was increased vigilance or reduced avoidance of threat, as threat value increased. This effect was found even within low trait anxious individuals, consistent with the “cognitive-motivational” view. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

抑郁患者的注意偏向

抑郁患者的注意偏向是抑郁认知研究中的重要问题。该文从研究范式、注意偏向特点及理论解释等方面进行了探讨,在研究范式上有Stroop范式、点探测任务和线索–靶子范式等,在抑郁患者注意偏向的特点上有对象为临床患者、需要阈上刺激、刺激内容针对抑郁患者和刺激强度不能太弱等,在理论解释上有注意成分、注意聚焦变窄、认知负荷和唤醒水平等,并对将来的研究方向进行了探讨     

Processing efficiency in anxiety: Evidence from eye-movements during visual search

It is generally held that anxiety is characterized by an attentional bias for threatening information. In recent years there has been an important debate whether these biases reside at the level of attentional selection (threat detection) or attentional processing after threat detection (attentional disengagement). In a visual search task containing emotional facial expressions, eye-movements were examined before and after threat detection in high and low trait anxious individuals to further elucidate the temporal unfolding of attentional bias. Results indicated that high-anxious individuals neither showed facilitated orienting to threat nor impaired disengagement of visual attention from threat. Interestingly, the presence of threat in the visual search display was associated with increased decision times in high-anxious individuals. These results challenge some of the current views on attentional bias to threat but indicate that emotional information reduces processing efficiency in anxiety.     

Trait rumination and response to negative evaluative lab-induced stress: neuroendocrine,affective, and cognitive outcomes

Theoretical models of depression posit that, under stress, elevated trait rumination predicts more pronounced or prolonged negative affective and neuroendocrine responses, and that trait rumination hampers removing irrelevant negative information from working memory. We examined several gaps regarding these models in the context of lab-induced stress. Non-depressed undergraduates completed a rumination questionnaire and either a negative-evaluative Trier Social Stress Test (n?=?55) or a non-evaluative control condition (n?=?69), followed by a modified Sternberg affective working memory task assessing the extent to which irrelevant negative information can be emptied from working memory. We measured shame, negative and positive affect, and salivary cortisol four times. Multilevel growth curve models showed rumination and stress interactively predicted cortisol reactivity; however, opposite predictions, greater rumination was associated with blunted cortisol reactivity to stress. Elevated trait rumination interacted with stress to predict augmented shame reactivity. Rumination and stress did not significantly interact to predict working memory performance, but under control conditions, rumination predicted greater difficulty updating working memory. Results support a vulnerability-stress model of trait rumination with heightened shame reactivity and cortisol dysregulation rather than hyper-reactivity in non-depressed emerging adults, but we cannot provide evidence that working memory processes are critical immediately following acute stress.     

The Effect of Positive Rumination Training on Mental Health and Attentional Bias

To examine the effect of positive rumination training on mental health and attentional bias, 32 college freshmen with low level of mental health were recruited and assigned to the experimental and waitlist control groups, 16 participants in each group. The experimental group received a 8-session group counseling with 2 h per session. Results showed that positive rumination increased while negative rumination, depression and anxiety decreased significantly for the experimental group. For the waitlist control group, all these indicators did not change significantly. The attention engagement in sad faces of the experimental group decreased significantly while other indicators of attentional bias did not change. The results indicate that group positive rumination training can improve mental health. But further research is needed to examine its effect on attentional bias.

     

Enhanced probing of attentional bias: The independence of anxiety-linked selectivity in attentional engagement with and disengagement from negative information

Cognitive models of anxiety posit that an attentional bias to negative information plays a causal role in elevated anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction. There has been considerable recent interest in determining whether this attentional bias reflects facilitated attentional engagement with and/or impaired attentional disengagement from negative information. We concur with the claim of investigators who have noted that the methodologies previously employed to dissociate engagement and disengagement biases are not optimal for this purpose. In the present study, we employ a novel methodology, the Attentional Response to Distal vs. Proximal Emotional Information (ARDPEI) task, which enables the discrete assessment of these two types of attentional selectivity. The findings demonstrate that facilitated attentional engagement with and impaired attentional disengagement from negative information both characterise elevated anxiety vulnerability. Further, these biases represent distinctive facets of anxiety-linked attentional selectivity. We discuss the potentially differing roles that engagement and disengagement biases may play in the development and/or maintenance of anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction.     

Anxiety-related attentional biases and their regulation by attentional control

This study examined the role of self-reported attentional control in regulating attentional biases related to trait anxiety. Simple detection targets were preceded by cues labeling potential target locations as threatening (likely to result in negative feedback) or safe (likely to result in positive feedback). Trait anxious participants showed an early attentional bias favoring the threatening location 250 ms after the cue and a late bias favoring the safe location 500 ms after the cue. The anxiety-related threat bias was moderated by attentional control at the 500-ms delay: Anxious participants with poor attentional control still showed the threat bias, whereas those with good control were better able to shift from the threatening location. Thus, skilled control of voluntary attention may allow anxious persons to limit the impact of threatening information.     

Self-referential schemas and attentional bias predict severity and naturalistic course of depression symptoms

Attentional bias and self-referential schemas have been observed in numerous cross-sectional studies of depressed adults and are theorised to maintain negative mood. However, few longitudinal studies have examined whether maladaptive cognition predicts the course of depressive symptoms. Fifty-seven adults with elevated depression symptoms were assessed for negative attentional bias using a dot-probe task with eye-tracking and self-referential schemas using a self-referent encoding task. Participants subsequently completed five weekly depression symptom assessments. Participants with more negative self-referential schemas had higher baseline depression symptoms (r?=?.55). However, participants who spent more time attending to negative words showed greater symptom worsening over time (r?=?.42). The findings for negative self-referential schemas replicate past research, while the findings for negative attention bias represent the first evidence showing that attentional biases predict naturalistic symptom course. This work suggests that negative attention biases maintain depression symptoms and represent an important treatment target for neurocognitive therapeutics.     

Effects of stress and anxiety on the processing of threat stimuli

Two experiments extended the work of MacLeod and Mathews (1988) and examined whether a cognitive bias for threat information is a function of state or trait anxiety. Color-naming and attention deployment tasks were used to assess the effects of a stress manipulation procedure on attentional responses in high and low trait anxious subjects. Subjects under high stress selectively allocated processing resources toward threat stimuli, irrespective of their trait anxiety level. There was no consistent evidence of a cognitive bias associated with trait anxiety, and the effect of the stress manipulation did not appear to be mediated by state anxiety. It was suggested that trait factors do not modify attentional biases associated with acute stress, but may influence such biases when stress is prolonged.     

阈下抑郁个体对负性情绪刺激的注意解脱困难

本研究拟采用点探测范式及不同情绪内容的面孔刺激（高兴、中性、悲伤和愤怒）考察阈下抑郁个体的负性注意偏向及其内在机制。点探测任务中情绪面孔配对呈现（负性-中性、正性-中性）,配对面孔中的情绪线索位置与靶刺激的位置构成负性一致/不一致和正性一致/不一致条件,同时实验中加入“中性-中性”面孔线索作为一致和不一致条件的对比基线来考察注意偏向的内在机制。结果发现,阈下抑郁个体在负性不一致条件下的反应时显著长于负性一致条件,表明阈下抑郁个体具有对负性刺激的注意偏向;进一步比较发现,阈下抑郁个体在负性不一致条件下的反应时显著的长于“中性-中性”基线条件,而负性一致条件与基线之间差异不显著,表明阈下抑郁个体的负性注意偏向为对负性刺激的注意解脱困难。结果另发现,阈下抑郁个体未能像无抑郁对照组个体表现出对正性刺激的注意偏向。结果表明,处于阈下抑郁状态的个体表现出对负性刺激的注意偏向,具体为对负性刺激的注意解脱困难,其原因可能是由于阈下抑郁个体在注意控制和情绪调节功能上的紊乱。     

Deployment of attention in clinical depression during symptom remission

The purpose of the current study was to investigate deployment of attention in clinically depressed patients during the process of symptom remission. Previous research indicates a non-depressed protective bias in attention whereas depressed individuals evidence no bias. A deployment-of-attention task based on negative, positive, and neutral adjectives was administered twice to 15 inpatients with major depression and 15 normal controls, at about 6 weeks apart. From test 1 to test 2, severity of patients' depressive symptoms improved significantly. Acutely depressed patients tended to show an attentional bias towards negative information whereas partially remitted patients manifested no attentional bias. Non-depressed individuals attended less to negative information than (acutely and partially remitted) depressed patients. Non-depressed participants but not depressed patients avoid negative information demonstrating a protective processing bias. Depressed patients are not characterized by a shift towards a pronounced protective pattern during symptom remission.