%0 Journal Article
%T Threat bias in attention orienting: evidence of specificity in a large community-based study
%J Psychological medicine
%D 2013
%A Salum, G. A.
%A Mogg, K.
%A Bradley, B. P.
%A Gadelha, A.
%A Pan, P.
%A Tamanaha, A. C.
%A Moriyama, T.
%A Graeff-Martins, Ana Soledade
%A Jarros, R. B.
%A Polanczyk, G.
%A do Rosário, M. C.
%A Leibenluft, E.
%A Rohde, Luis Augusto Paim
%A Manfro, G. G.
%A Pine, D. S.
%V 43
%N 4
%P 733-745
%X BACKGROUND: Preliminary research implicates threat-related attention biases in paediatric anxiety disorders. However, major questions exist concerning diagnostic specificity, effects of symptom-severity levels, and threat-stimulus exposure durations in attention paradigms. This study examines these issues in a large, community school-based sample. Method A total of 2046 children (ages 6-12 years) were assessed using the Development and Well Being Assessment (DAWBA), Childhood Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and dot-probe tasks. Children were classified based on presence or absence of 'fear-related' disorders, 'distress-related' disorders, and behavioural disorders. Two dot-probe tasks, which differed in stimulus exposure, assessed attention biases for happy-face and threat-face cues. The main analysis included 1774 children. RESULTS: For attention bias scores, a three-way interaction emerged among face-cue emotional valence, diagnostic group, and internalizing symptom severity (F=2.87, p<0.05). This interaction reflected different associations between internalizing symptom severity and threat-related attention bias across diagnostic groups. In children with no diagnosis (n=1411, mean difference=11.03, s.e.=3.47, df=1, p<0.001) and those with distress-related disorders (n=66, mean difference=10.63, s.e.=5.24, df=1, p<0.05), high internalizing symptoms predicted vigilance towards threat. However, in children with fear-related disorders (n=86, mean difference=-11.90, s.e.=5.94, df=1, p<0.05), high internalizing symptoms predicted an opposite tendency, manifesting as greater bias away from threat. These associations did not emerge in the behaviour-disorder group (n=211). CONCLUSIONS: The association between internalizing symptoms and biased orienting varies with the nature of developmental psychopathology. Both the form and severity of psychopathology moderates threat-related attention biases in children.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
%G en
%I Cambridge University Press
%@ 0033-2917
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033291712001651