A growing theoretical and research literature suggests that trait and state social anxiety can predict attentional patterns in the presence of emotional stimuli. The current study adds to this literature by examining the effects of state anxiety on visual attention and testing the vigilance–avoidance hypothesis, using a method of continuous visual attentional assessment. Participants were 91 undergraduate college students with high or low trait fear of negative evaluation (FNE), a core aspect of social anxiety, who were randomly assigned to either a high or low state anxiety condition. Participants engaged in a free view task in which pairs of emotional facial stimuli were presented and eye movements were continuously monitored. Overall, participants with high FNE avoided angry stimuli and participants with high state anxiety attended to positive stimuli. Participants with high state anxiety and high FNE were avoidant of angry faces, whereas participants with low state and low FNE exhibited a bias toward angry faces. The study provided partial support for the vigilance–avoidance hypothesis. The findings add to the mixed results in the literature that suggest that both positive and negative emotional stimuli may be important in understanding the complex attention patterns associated with social anxiety. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. 相似文献
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) models posit vigilance for external social threat cues and exacerbated self-focused attention as key in disorder development and maintenance. Evidence indicates a modified dot-probe protocol may reduce symptoms of SAD; however, the efficacy when compared to a standard protocol and long-term maintenance of treatment gains remains unclear. Furthermore, the efficacy of such protocols on SAD-related constructs remains relatively unknown. The current investigation clarified these associations using a randomized control trial replicating and extending previous research. Participants with SAD (n = 113; 71% women) were randomized to complete a standard (i.e. control) or modified (i.e. active) dot-probe protocol consisting of 15-min sessions twice weekly for four weeks. Self-reported symptoms were measured at baseline, post-treatment, and 4-month and 8-month follow-ups. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated significant self-reported reductions in symptoms of social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, trait anxiety, and depression, but no such reductions in fear of positive evaluation. Symptom changes did not differ based on condition and were maintained at 8-month follow-up. Attentional biases during the dot-probe task were not related to symptom change. Overall, our results replicate support for the efficacy of both protocols in reducing symptoms of SAD and specific related constructs, and suggest a role of exposure, expectancy, or practice effects, rather than attention modification, in effecting such reductions. The current results also support distinct relationships between fears of negative and positive evaluation and social anxiety. Further research focused on identifying the mechanisms of change in attention modification protocols appears warranted. 相似文献
The present study examined whether observers are able to establish multiple attentional sets to concurrently monitor two different spatial locations. Observers identified a target letter in red or cyan among nontarget letters of other heterogeneous colours during a temporal feature search. A peripheral distractor display consisted of one item of either the same colour as the current target, and the other potential target colour, or an irrelevant colour that could never be the target. They identified an odd-ball colour letter among homogenous colours during a singleton search. The results revealed that observers maintained multiple attentional sets for detecting two singletons or for targets involving two (or three) features. However, they were unable to maintain a mixture of sets. Moreover, exposure to a distractor containing feature that corresponded to a feature of the current target was advantageous for target identification. The presence or absence of this set-specific capture depended on top-down knowledge and did not occur automatically in the singleton-detection stream. These results demonstrate a limitation in the flexibility of attentional sets. Although two singleton detections were possible, multiple attentional templates for a more complex attentional set could not be maintained concurrently when monitoring multiple rapid serial visual presentations. 相似文献
Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the effects of experiential avoidance (EA) on the indirect relationship of chronic pain patients’ illness representations to pain interference, through pain catastrophising
Design and main outcome measure: The sample consisted of 162 patients diagnosed with an arthritis-related or a musculoskeletal disorder. The effects of EA on the pathway between illness representations, pain catastrophising and pain interference were examined with PROCESS, a computational tool for SPSS
Results: After controlling for patient and illness-related variables and pain severity, the ‘illness representations–pain catastrophising–pain interference’ pathway was interrupted at the higher levels of EA. The reason was that, at the high levels of EA, either the relation of illness representations to pain catastrophising or the relation of pain catastrophising to pain interference was not statistically significant.
Conclusion: The findings indicate that EA is not a generalised negative response to highly aversive conditions, at least as far as the factors examined in this study are concerned. EA may rather reflect a coping reaction, the impact of which depends on its specific interactions with the other aspects of the self-regulation mechanism. At least in chronic pain, EA should become the focus of potential intervention only when its interaction with the illness-related self-regulation mechanism results in negative outcomes. 相似文献
This study was conducted to examine the longitudinal relations between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and violent behaviors. In this study, 415 adolescent survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake in China (May 12, 2008) were assessed by using self-report questionnaires 1 year (T1), 1.5 years (T2), and 2 years (T3) after the earthquake. The findings suggested that from 1 to 1.5 years after the earthquake, only intrusive symptoms of PTSD were a risk factor for violent behaviors, whereas violent behaviors were a risk factor for all 3 PTSD symptom clusters. Furthermore, 1.5 to 2 years after the earthquake, avoidance symptoms of PTSD were a risk factor for violent behaviors and hyperarousal symptoms of PTSD had no significant relation with violent behaviors. 相似文献
Experiential avoidance (EA) is an emotion-regulation strategy used to control or avoid unpleasant internal experiences. Despite the important role of avoidance in depressive disorders, there is relatively little research directly examining the role of EA in the development and maintenance of depression, and most of this research relies on measurement of EA as a global and stable personality trait. In this study we sought to extend the research on EA and depression by using a daily diary design and multilevel analysis to examine how the daily relationship between EA and negative affect (NA) varies as a function of baseline depressive symptoms. In order to achieve this goal we created a new state measure of EA assessing several avoidant behaviors. The findings revealed that participants with more depressive symptoms used more daily EA overall. Additionally, the difference in daily EA between those with higher versus lower depressive symptoms was greater on days when participants experienced less NA. This moderation effect was found only concurrently whereas one-day lagged analysis failed to reveal this effect. These findings provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that depression is associated with an inflexibly high level of avoidant emotion regulation. 相似文献
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. 相似文献
Worry-prone individuals have less residual working memory capacity during worry compared to low-worriers (Hayes, Hirsch, & Mathews, 2008). People typically worry in verbal form, and the present study investigated whether verbal worry depletes working memory capacity more than worry in imagery-based form. High and low-worriers performed a working memory task, random interval generation, whilst thinking about a worry in verbal or imagery form. High (but not low) worriers had less available working memory capacity when worrying in verbal compared to imagery-based form. The findings could not be accounted for by general attentional control, amount of negatively-valenced thought, or appraisals participants made about worry topics. The findings indicate that the verbal nature of worry is implicated in the depletion of working memory resources during worry among high-worriers, and point to the potential value of imagery-based techniques in cognitive-behavioural treatments for problematic worry. 相似文献