TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2013//
TI  - Threat bias in attention orienting: evidence of specificity in a large community-based study
JO  - Psychological medicine
A1  - Salum, G. A.
A1  - Mogg, K.
A1  - Bradley, B. P.
A1  - Gadelha, A.
A1  - Pan, P.
A1  - Tamanaha, A. C.
A1  - Moriyama, T.
A1  - Graeff-Martins, Ana Soledade
A1  - Jarros, R. B.
A1  - Polanczyk, G.
A1  - do Rosário, M. C.
A1  - Leibenluft, E.
A1  - Rohde, Luis Augusto Paim
A1  - Manfro, G. G.
A1  - Pine, D. S.
SP  - 733
EP  - 745
VL  - 43
IS  - 4
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 0033-2917
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033291712001651
ID  - ref1
ER  -