Dynamic measures of anxiety-related threat bias: Links to stress reactivity

Exaggerated attention to threatening information, or the threat bias, has been implicated in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Recent research has highlighted methodological limitations in threat bias measures, such as temporal insensitivity, leading to the development of novel metrics that capture change and variability in threat bias over time. These metrics, however, have rarely been examined in non-clinical samples. The present study aimed to explore the utility of these trial-level metrics in predicting anxiety-related stress reactivity (stress-induced negative mood state) in trait anxious adults (N?=?52). Following a stressor, participants completed the dot probe task to generate threat bias scores. Stress reactivity was measured via stress-induced changes in subjective mood state. More variability in trial-level bias scores (TL-BSs) and greater bias away from threat (both mean and peak negative TL-BSs) predicted increased stress reactivity. The temporal characteristics of threat bias and implications for clinically-relevant measurement are discussed.     

Neurocognitive assessment of emotional context sensitivity

Sensitivity to emotional context is an emerging construct for characterizing adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation, but few measurement approaches exist. The current study combined behavioral and neurocognitive measures to assess context sensitivity in relation to self-report measures of adaptive emotional flexibility and well-being. Sixty-six adults completed an emotional go/no-go task using happy, fearful, and neutral faces as go and no-go cues, while EEG was recorded to generate event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting attentional selection and discrimination (N170) and cognitive control (N2). Context sensitivity was measured as the degree of emotional facilitation or disruption in the go/no-go task and magnitude of ERP response to emotion cues. Participants self-reported on emotional flexibility, anxiety, and depression. Overall participants evidenced emotional context sensitivity, such that when happy faces were go stimuli, accuracy improved (greater behavioral facilitation), whereas when fearful faces were no-go stimuli, errors increased (disrupted behavioral inhibition). These indices predicted emotional flexibility and well-being: Greater behavioral facilitation following happy cues was associated with lower depression and anxiety, whereas greater disruption in behavioral inhibition following fearful cues was associated with lower flexibility. ERP indices of context sensitivity revealed additional associations: Greater N2 to fear go cues was associated with less anxiety and depression, and greater N2 and N170 to happy and fear no-go cues, respectively, were associated with greater emotional flexibility and well-being. Results suggest that pleasant and unpleasant emotions selectively enhance and disrupt components of context sensitivity, and that behavioral and ERP indices of context sensitivity predict flexibility and well-being.     

Associations between GAD symptom severity and error monitoring depend on neural quenching variability

Motivation and Emotion - Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) has been inconsistently associated with exaggerated threat monitoring measured via the error-related negativity (ERN). This suggests the...