Negative emotionality influences the effects of emotion on time perception

In this study I used a temporal bisection task to test if greater overestimation of time due to negative emotion is moderated by individual differences in negative emotionality. The effects of fearful facial expressions on time perception were also examined. After a training phase, participants estimated the duration of facial expressions (anger, happiness, fearfulness) and a neutral-baseline facial expression. In accordance to the operation of an arousal-based process, the duration of angry expressions was consistently overestimated relative to other expressions and the baseline condition. In support of a role for individual differences in negative emotionality on time perception, temporal bias due to angry and fearful expressions was positively correlated to individual differences in self-reported negative emotionality. The results are discussed in relation both to the literature on attentional bias to facial expressions in anxiety and fearfulness and also, to the hypothesis that angry expressions evoke a fear-specific response. © 2008 American Psychological Association

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Paradigm shift: A live real-world attention bias task to predict social anxiety and depressive symptoms in adolescent girls

Rates of depression and social anxiety increase dramatically during adolescence, particularly in girls. Cognitive models of depression and anxiety have implicated attention biases, or preferential attention toward negative stimuli, as a possible mechanism by which individuals develop depression and anxiety. Yet, little is understood about how attention biases operate in social anxiety and depression during adolescent development. Furthermore, most research on attention biases have used computer paradigms (e.g., the dot probe task) to study attention; however, such tasks may be limited in their applicability to real-world settings. To examine attention biases in a live, socially evaluative environment, 123 adolescent girls (aged 11-13) gave a speech in front of a potentially critical judge and a positive judge while wearing mobile eye-tracking glasses. To compare this new task to a more traditional measure of attention, participants also completed a stationary, eye-tracking version of the dot-probe task. Clinician and self-report measures of social anxiety and depressive symptoms were collected. Results revealed that attentional bias indices from the live task demonstrated stronger reliability than those from the dot-probe task. Attention indices from the live attention task were not found to be comparable to indices from the dot probe task, suggesting these tasks tap into unique attentional processes. Overall, girls with greater sustained attention to negative compared to neutral stimuli reported higher levels of social anxiety, and girls who were faster to disengage attention from negative compared to neutral stimuli reported higher levels of depressive symptoms in the dot-probe task. Additionally, girls who spent less time dwelling on the positive judge in the live attention task reported higher depressive symptoms, in line with previous research, suggesting attention patterns in the live attention task may be an important marker for depressive symptoms in adolescence. Future research may benefit from using a prospective, longitudinal research design to examine how attention bias in multiple contexts may be associated with the onset of social anxiety and depressive disorders in order to improve current mechanistic prevention and intervention efforts

Maternal mental health, processing of emotion and maternal sensitivity

Background: Research suggests that postnatal affective disorders such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are associated with lower levels of maternal sensitivity. Understanding the mechanisms through which maternal affective disorders influence maternal sensitivity is important as it could lead to more tailored effective interventions to improve outcomes for women and their infants. One mechanism that is yet to be explored is the way in which mothers’ process infant-related information. This thesis therefore developed a cognitive model that aimed to examine this mechanism. Aim: The aim of this thesis was to test this cognitive model of maternal sensitivity using a range of experimental, observational and questionnaire studies. The model proposed that maternal affective symptoms would be associated with maternal processing of infant-related information, which in turn would be associated with maternal sensitivity. Methods & Results: The aims were addressed through a systematic review and a study of women with (n = 23) and without (n = 47) affective symptoms and their infants (aged 2-8 months) after birth. The systematic review found that mothers with perinatal affective disorders are faster to disengage from sad infant faces and are more accurate at identifying sadness in infant faces (Article 1). To assess how mothers process infant-related information, validated pictures of infants’ emotional faces were needed. Therefore, a validated set of infant emotional expressions was created and validated on student midwives and nurses and members of the general public. The images were found to have high criterion validity and good test–retest reliability (Article 2). Mothers processing of infant-related information and its relationship with maternal sensitivity was tested using a series of questionnaires, computerised and observational tasks. Results are reported in Articles 3, 4 and 5. Conclusion: Overall, the cognitive model of maternal sensitivity was only partly supported, in that maternal affective symptoms explained more of the variance of maternal sensitivity than maternal processing of infant-related information. Despite this, the work in this thesis provides a novel contribution to the literature by developing and testing a model based on previous research and by using robust measures such as eye-tracking technology and observational measures of mother-infant interaction. However, interpretation of the data is hindered due to methodological issues such as small sample sizes, homogeneous sample and demand characteristics. Therefore, more research is needed to test this model on a larger, more heterogenous sample

Multimodal examination of emotion processing systems associated with negative affectivity across early childhood

High Temperamental Negative Affectivity in early childhood has been found to predict later emotion dysregulation. While much work has been conducted to separately probe bio-behavioral systems associated with Negative Affectivity, very little work has examined the relations among multiple systems across age. In this study, we use multi-modal methods to index neurobiological systems associated with Negative Affectivity in 53 4-7-year-old children. Prefrontal activation during emotion regulation was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy over the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) while children played a game designed to elicit frustration in Social (Happy and Angry faces) and Nonsocial contexts. Gaze behaviors while free-viewing Happy and Angry faces were also measured. Finally, Negative Affectivity was indexed using a score composite based on factor analysis of parent-reported temperament. Using mixed-effects linear models, we found an age-dependent association between Negative Affectivity and both PFC activation during frustration and fixation duration on the mouth area of Happy faces, such that older children high in Negative Affectivity spent less time looking at the mouths of Happy faces and had lower PFC activation in response to frustration (ps\u3c0.034). These results provide further insight to how Negative Affectivity may be associated with changes in affective neurobiological systems across early childhood

Affect-Driven Attention Biases as Animal Welfare Indicators: Review and Methods.

Attention bias describes the differential allocation of attention towards one stimulus compared to others. In humans, this bias can be mediated by the observer's affective state and is implicated in the onset and maintenance of affective disorders such as anxiety. Affect-driven attention biases (ADABs) have also been identified in a few other species. Here, we review the literature on ADABs in animals and discuss their utility as welfare indicators. Despite a limited research effort, several studies have found that negative affective states modulate attention to negative (i.e., threatening) cues. ADABs influenced by positive-valence states have also been documented in animals. We discuss methods for measuring ADAB and conclude that looking time, dot-probe, and emotional spatial cueing paradigms are particularly promising. Research is needed to test them with a wider range of species, investigate attentional scope as an indicator of affect, and explore the possible causative role of attention biases in determining animal wellbeing. Finally, we argue that ADABs might not be best-utilized as indicators of general valence, but instead to reveal specific emotions, motivations, aversions, and preferences. Paying attention to the human literature could facilitate these advances

Biased attention to threat and anxiety: on taking a developmental approach

Several researchers have proposed a causal relation between biased attention to threat and the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in both children and adults. However, despite the widely-documented correlation between attention bias to threat and anxiety, developmental research in this domain is limited. In this review, we highlight the importance of taking a developmental approach to studying attention biases to threat and anxiety. First, we discuss how recent developmental work on attention to threat fits into existing theoretical frameworks for the development of anxiety, and how attention biases might interact with other risk factors across development. Then we review the developmental literature on attention bias to threat and anxiety, and describe how classic methodologies can be modified to study attention biases in even the youngest infants. Finally, we discuss limitations and future directions in this domain, emphasizing the need for future longitudinal research beginning in early infancy that tracks concurrent developments in both biased attention and anxiety. Altogether, we hope that by highlighting the importance of development in the study of attention bias to threat and anxiety, we can provide a roadmap for how researchers might implement developmental approaches to studying a potential core mechanism in anxiety