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<p>Research utilizing the dot probe task to examine attentional bias to threat in social anxiety has yielded inconsistent findings. Many manipulations have been included across dot probe studies, perhaps contributing to the discrepant results. Alternatively, the psychometrics of the dot probe may play a role. Two studies that have examined the psychometric properties of the task found the task to be unreliable (Schmuckle, 2005; Staugaard, 2009).</p> <p>Prompted by the mixed findings, the present study had two overarching goals. The first was to replicate and extend the extant literature by incorporating a number of manipulations into the dot probe task and examining individual differences in social anxiety, and personality types associated with social avoidance and social approach, or shyness and sociability, respectively. The second goal was to investigate the psychometrics of the dot probe task by assessing its test-retest reliability and internal consistency. To address these goals, participants completed a dot probe task that involved manipulations of emotional valence (happy, angry), intensity (moderate, strong), and exposure time (100ms, 500ms) of facial stimuli on two occasions, separated approximately by a month. Additionally, participants were parsed into high and low groups of social anxiety, shyness, and sociability by way of median splits on two personality measures.</p> <p>Using attentional bias scores, a group difference was observed only in the sociability grouping at Time 1. In the low sociability group, a marginal (<em>p</em>=0.049) interaction between valence and intensity was found. This interaction, however, was not observed at Time 2. Additionally, poor test-retest reliability and internal consistency of the task were observed.</p> <p>These findings bring into question the nature of attentional bias in social anxiety, shyness, and sociability, and the psychometric soundness of the dot probe task. Conceptual and psychometric issues are discussed pertaining to the present study’s results and the extant dot probe literature.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

The present study compared attentional disengagement from threat-related stimuli in socially phobic (SP) and non-anxiety-disordered (NAD) adolescents. The associations between trait anxiety and state anxiety and attentional bias in SP adolescents were assessed. Furthermore, the present study compared the attentional control abilities of SP and NAD adolescents. Twenty-eight SP participants aged 12-17 and 27 NAD controls, matched on age and IQ, were administered a computer task to measure attentional disengagement from threat-related words. Participants completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and subtests of the Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-ch). Mixed ANOVA analyses indicated that SP and NAD adolescents did not differ in their disengagement from threat-related stimuli. Correlational analyses indicated that state anxiety was associated with disengagement from threat, but only when SP participants with comorbid ADHD were excluded from analyses. Trait anxiety was not significantly associated with attentional disengagement from threat. Finally, SP participants performed more poorly than NAD participants on the TEA-ch subtests, indicating poorer attentional control in SP participants. These results suggest that SP adolescents experience a deficit in executive attentional skills. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed. / Psychology

Information-processing studies have shown an attentional bias (AB) towards threat cues in individuals with anxiety disorders. Research has consistently shown that AB to threat may play a causal role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Recent empirical evidence has demonstrated support for Attention Retraining (AR) to modify AB to threat, resulting in reductions of anxiety. Currently, AR approaches have not been systematically tested in individuals with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of a computer-based attention retraining (CBAR) treatment for clinical levels of PTSD using a modified dot-probe paradigm. A single-case time-series design was employed with a treatment and post-treatment period, following baseline. Results indicated significant reductions in trauma-related symptoms, attention to threat cues, state anxiety and depression, along with a significant increase in coping self-efficacy. AB change for the group was not significant. A significant relationship between AB change and PTSD symptoms was found. The results were discussed from the standpoint of the viability of AR for trauma. / Master of Science

This thesis focusses on the role of attentional bias for health-threat information in the production and maintenance of medically unexplained symptoms, somatoform disorders and high levels of physical symptom reporting. It is comprised of three separate papers. Paper 1 was prepared for Clinical Psychology Review as a systematic review of the evidence concerning attentional bias for health–threat information in populations presenting with somatoform/somatic symptom disorders and high levels of physical symptom reporting. From the 20 studies deemed relevant for review, it was concluded that - although limited - the evidence indicated that a relationship existed between attentional bias for health-threat information and levels of physical symptom reporting. No robust evidence was found to establish whether this relationship was a casual one. Paper 2 was prepared for Journal of Abnormal Psychology and investigated whether an exogenous cueing task could be used to reduce presumed attentional bias for health-threat information in a sample of high symptom reporting students. The results showed an unexpected attentional avoidance of health-threat information at baseline, which the study manipulation unintentionally exacerbated. No change in levels of physical symptom reporting was noted between groups (attributed to a methodological error) but a trend in relatively greater anxiety for those who received the manipulation was noted. It was concluded that avoidance may be a key factor in high symptom reporting and that this merited further research. Paper 3 provided a critical reflection of Papers 1 and 2, as well as the research process as a whole. Implications for theory and clinical practice as well as future research directions were discussed.

Selective attention towards alcohol-related cues (i.e., “attentional bias”) is thought to reflect increased incentive motivational value of alcohol and alcohol cues acquired through a history of heavy alcohol use, and as such attentional bias is considered to be a clinically relevant factor contributing to alcohol use disorders. This dissertation consists of two studies that investigated specific mechanisms through which attentional bias might serve to promote alcohol abuse. Study 1 compared magnitude of attentional bias in heavy (n = 20) and light (n = 20) drinkers following placebo and two doses of alcohol (0.45 g/kg and 0.65 g/kg). Heavy drinkers displayed significantly greater attentional bias than did moderate drinkers following placebo. However, heavy drinkers displayed a dose-dependent decrease in response to alcohol. Individual differences in attentional bias under placebo were associated with both self-reported and laboratory alcohol consumption, yet bias following alcohol administration did not predict either measure of consumption. These findings suggest that attentional bias is strongest before a drinking episode begins, and as such might be most influential in terms of initiation of alcohol consumption. Study 2 addressed theoretical accounts regarding potential reciprocal interactions between attentional bias and inhibitory control that might promote excessive alcohol consumption. Fifty drinkers performed a measure of attentional bias and a novel task that measures the degree to which alcohol-related stimuli can increase behavioral activation and reduce the ability to inhibit inappropriate responses. As hypothesized, inhibitory failures were significantly greater following alcohol images compared to neutral images. Further, heightened attentional bias was associated with greater response activation following alcohol images. These findings suggest that alcohol stimuli serve to disrupt mechanisms of behavioral control, and that heightened attentional bias is associated with greater disruption of control mechanisms following alcohol images. Taken together, these studies provide strong evidence of an association between attentional bias in sober individuals and alcohol consumption, suggesting a pronounced role of attentional bias in initiation of consumption. Further, findings show that attention to alcohol cues can serve to disrupt mechanisms of inhibitory control that might be necessary to regulate drinking behavior, suggesting a potential means through which attentional bias might promote consumption.

Attentional bias (AB) refers to the tendency to selectively attend to (orientation towards) and/or hold attention on (slowed disengagment from) disorder-relevant stimuli. Females with eating-related concerns are thought to preferentially process threatening stimuli, which in turn is thought to maintain and exacerbate eating concerns. The aim of the present thesis was to explore AB for threatening stimuli in females characterised by restrained, external or emotional eating, and those with high levels of (non-clinical) eating psychopathology. This was carried out with the intention of identifying cognitive processes that contribute to eating behaviours in females, in order to assess the relevance of an attention training (AT) programme for reducing such biases. A pilot study assessed orientation/slowed disengagement, for mood and food words amongst females with high/low levels of restraint. Forty females completed a modified Stroop task with three conditions. Food and mood conditions included sequences of five words ( target food/mood followed by four neutral). The neutral condition consisted of all neutral words. Performance did not significantly differ according to high/low restraint groups. All participants took longest to colour-name word position 2 (demonstrating slowed disengagement lasting one consecutive trial). However, this pattern was also found in the neutral condition. Methodological limitations were then addressed in study one. High/low restrained eaters (n=48) completed a modified Stroop where targets (food, interpersonal threat, animal) were presented prior to four neutral words. Participants were slow to disengage from targets (slowest for word position 2) in all conditions. Patterns of responding indicated that restrained eaters might take longer to disengage (i.e. the carry-over effect from the food word seemed to last longer than one trial). However, more neutral words in the sequence were needed to assess this. As slowed disengagement from animals also arose, a categorical effect may have occurred. Study two explored attention processing of food using modified Stroop and dot probe tasks. In the Stroop task targets (food, interpersonal threat, household objects) were presented prior to six matched neutral words. This task revealed no evidence of AB. No significant pattern of differences between restrained (n=29)/unrestrained eaters (n=31) emerged; however, binge eating scores were significantly negatively correlated with response times. A dot probe task with food/neutral picture pairs also revealed no evidence of AB. Both restrained/unrestrained eaters had negative mean interference scores indicating avoidance of food. None of the following eating behaviours significantly correlated with AB: restraint, disinhibition, external eating, emotional eating and non-clinical eating psychopathology. Study three employed a further modified dot probe task based on image ratings. There was no evidence of AB, and no significant relation between task performance and restrained, emotional or external eating. 2000ms bias scores (assessing disengagement) were significantly negatively correlated with eating psychopathology and age, suggesting that those with high levels of non-clinical eating psychopathology attentionally avoid food stimuli and that younger females are slower to disengage attention from food (although found within a limited age range). Study four employed further modified Stroop and dot probe tasks, and assessed whether AB mediates the negative mood-eating relationship. Participants were allocated to negative or neutral mood conditions. No evidence of AB was found with the dot probe, but greater levels of emotional eating were associated with slower responding. In the Stroop task, all participants displayed an orientation bias towards food. Emotional eating and drive for thinness (DFT) scores were significantly positively correlated with food word colour-naming times but only amongst participants in a negative mood. However, those with high levels of external eating showed greater AB towards food when in a neutral mood. Highly emotional eaters in a negative mood showed a greater desire to eat than those in a neutral mood but did not increase in food intake. Furthermore, those with a high DFT (in a negative mood) showed no evidence of increased desire to eat or food intake. AB was not significantly related to subjective appetite or food intake. Therefore, AB does not seem to mediate the negative-mood eating relationship. The present thesis provides important suggestions for modifications of Stroop and dot probe tasks targeting orientation and disengagement. A modified Stroop has been more sensitive at detecting food AB than the dot probe. Implications of biased attention processing are discussed in relation to the development of harmful eating behaviours, and the present findings have important implications for developing programmes to prevent eating disorders amongst at-risk females (e.g. through AT or training at-risk females how to effectively cope with negative mood).

Underpinned by the Behavioural Approach System (BAS) dysregulation theory of bipolar disorder (BD), five studies were conducted in non-clinical samples to; refine the measurement of state Approach Motivation (AM); measure minor increases in AM; and then finally, to investigate how this relates to attentional biases for emotional stimuli. Study 1 attempted to clarify the phenomenology of state AM and revealed four separable factors that emerged from pooled AM questionnaire items. These structures loosely mapped on hypothesized components of the BAS (Depue & Iacono, 1989) that pertain to; cognitive elements of approach motivation (feeling determined and inspired); an energized, activated state; an affective structure relating to positive mood and outlook; and finally to feelings of excitement. Studies 2 and 3 investigated the validity of the four derived factors and their parent scales against a reward-oriented laboratory induction, a psychophysiological marker of AM, and a test of the discriminative power. The validity results suggested that the most well-established of the scales, the PANAS-PA, slightly outperformed the other measures by showing the greatest response to an AM induction. A second aim was to explore the substructure of a valid measure of mania risk - the hypomanic personality scale (HPS: Eckblad & Chapman, 1986) – in relation to AM responsivity. Unexpectedly, individuals who endorsed unpredictable and changeable moods (mood volatility) displayed elevated sympathetic arousal in response to control task. On this basis, and with a view to exploring the role selective attentional processes as a mediator of AM dysregulation that is relevant to bipolar disorder, study 4 and 5 utilised PANAS-PA to replicate a bi-directional congruency-effect found in the literature between elevations in AM and attentional information-processing biases to reward-related stimuli. Results in general did not support a causal influence of AM on attentional biases, nor did the attempted manipulation of attentional biases affect downstream AM. However, there was evidence that within a stratified sample of participants who reliably responded to the AM and control conditions, those at greater risk to mania exhibited an attentional bias for both positive and negative stimuli, relative those at lower risk to mania.

Test anxiety is an individual personality trait, which results in elevated state anxiety in situations of performance evaluation. For school-age children, high-stakes examinations occurring at the culmination of programmes of study are where they frequently experience such evaluation. Alongside its impact on an individual's wellbeing, heightened test anxiety has been reliably linked to deficits in performance on examinations and assessments. Attentional bias has been shown to be an aspect of many forms of anxiety and is considered to have role in the maintenance of state anxiety, though the mechanisms underlying this are not fully clear. However, Attentional Control Theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, &amp; Calvo, 2007) implicates preferential allocation of attention to threat in its explanation of performance deficits associated with test anxiety. The presence of attentional bias in test anxiety appears theoretically plausible with some empirical support (e.g. Putwain, Langdale, Woods and Nicholson, 2011); however, its reliability is under question. This study aims to investigate the presence of attentional bias in test anxiety, with a view to further understanding its underlying mechanisms and informing the development of interventions to ameliorate its effects. To ensure ecological validity, this study was conducted in schools and colleges, with a sample of 16-18-year olds following high-stakes programmes of study. Full investigation of test anxiety requires individuals to experience heightened state anxiety through performance evaluation threat; hence, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was modified to make it applicable to this context and population. This study was conducted in two experimental phases, both of which adopted a mixed methodological approach to provide quantitative and qualitative data. The preliminary phase evaluated the materials and anxiety manipulation protocols. The main phase employed the modified-TSST in collaboration with a dot-probe task to investigate participants' attentional bias when under high performance evaluation threat. No patterns of attentional bias were uncovered to indicate a consistent relationship to either trait test anxiety or attentional control. However, there was a level of congruence between how some individuals describe themselves in evaluative situations and the attentional bias they displayed. Further investigation employing mixed methodological approaches such as Single Case Experimental Design is recommended to identify and address attentional bias in test anxiety.

Purpose: The tendency to prioritize negative or threatening social information, a cognitive process known as cognitive bias, has been linked to the development of social anxiety. Given the increased risk for social anxiety among adolescents who stutter (aWS), this project extended the research on cognitive bias to aWS to inform our understanding of the psychosocial factors associated with stuttering in adolescence – the period of development when social anxiety typically emerges. The purpose of this two-part study was to examine group and individual differences in two forms of cognitive bias among aWS and typically fluent controls (TFC) – attentional and interpretation biases. Methods: A sample of 102 adolescents (49 aWS and 53 TFC; 13- to 19-years-old) completed a self-report measure of social anxiety, a computerized attentional bias task, and a computerized interpretation bias task. To assess attentional bias, neutral-negative face pairs were presented in a modified dot-probe paradigm in which response times to engaging and disengaging from neutral, fearful, and angry expressions were measured. To assess interpretation bias, ambiguous verbal and nonverbal social scenarios were presented in a vignette-based recognition task, after which participants endorsed possible negative and positive interpretations of those scenarios. Results: The aWS and TFC reported comparable degrees of social anxiety, although female aWS reported higher levels than male aWS. For the attentional bias task, aWS were faster to engage with fearful faces than to maintain attention on neutral faces, and they were also faster to disengage from fearful and angry faces than to maintain attention on those negative faces. TFC did not demonstrate an attentional preference for any particular face type. For the interpretation bias task, while aWS and TFC rated negative and positive interpretations of verbal and nonverbal scenarios similarly, social anxiety moderated the effect of interpretation characteristics on endorsement of those interpretations; participants with greater social anxiety endorsed negative interpretations of verbal scenarios to a greater degree than those with lower social anxiety, and participants with lower social anxiety endorsed positive interpretations of verbal and nonverbal scenarios to a greater degree than those with higher social anxiety. Conclusions: This study contributes to the existing literature in several meaningful ways. First, this sample of aWS and TFC demonstrated comparable rates of social anxiety, which counters many other reports of group differences in social anxiety in this population. Second, it supports previous preliminary accounts of attentional bias among individuals who stutter. The present findings are novel in that aWS’ rapid engagement with and rapid disengagement from negative faces were observed in the absence of group differences in social anxiety. Third, the results challenge the speculation that stuttering is associated with negative interpretation bias – a relationship that has been proposed in the literature but never empirically investigated. Taken together, these findings provide the groundwork for continued investigation into the role of social information processing on psychosocial outcomes for aWS.