Attention bias modification training as a potential preventative tool

We will use eye-tracking techniques to understand more about attentional bias and how it changes through ABM training. Through neuroimaging, we will look at \u27resting state functional connectivity\u27, which is the activity and communication in the brain when a person is not engaging in any activity themselves. There are resting-state patterns of brain activity that have been identified in the brains of youth with depression, anxiety and related disorders, but we do not know if these brain patterns can be used to identify those at risk for these disorders. We also don\u27t know if preventative approaches to depression and anxiety, such as ABM, can change these patterns in the brain.https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/brainscanprojectsummaries/1034/thumbnail.jp

Variable- And Person-Centered Approaches to Affect-Biased Attention in Infancy Reveal Unique Relations With Infant Negative Affect and Maternal Anxiety

Affect-biased attention is an automatic process that prioritizes emotionally or motivationally salient stimuli. Several models of affect-biased attention and its development suggest that it comprises an individual\u27s ability to both engage with and disengage from emotional stimuli. Researchers typically rely on singular tasks to measure affect-biased attention, which may lead to inconsistent results across studies. Here we examined affect-biased attention across three tasks in a unique sample of 193 infants, using both variable-centered (factor analysis; FA) and person-centered (latent profile analysis; LPA) approaches. Using exploratory FA, we found evidence for two factors of affect-biased attention: an Engagement factor and a Disengagement factor, where greater maternal anxiety was related to less engagement with faces. Using LPA, we found two groups of infants with different patterns of affect-biased attention: a Vigilant group and an Avoidant group. A significant interaction noted that infants higher in negative affect who also had more anxious mothers were most likely to be in the Vigilant group. Overall, these results suggest that both FA and LPA are viable approaches for studying distinct questions related to the development of affect-biased attention, and set the stage for future longitudinal work examining the role of infant negative affect and maternal anxiety in the emergence of affect-biased attention

Now it’s your turn!: Eye blink rate in a Jenga task modulated by interaction of task wait times, effortful control, and internalizing behaviors

Dopamine is a versatile neurotransmitter with implications in many domains, including anxiety and effortful control. Where high levels of effortful control are often regarded as adaptive, other work suggests that high levels of effortful control may be a risk factor for anxiety. Dopamine signaling may be key in understanding these relations. Eye blink rate is a non-invasive proxy metric of midbrain dopamine activity. However, much work with eye blink rate has been constrained to screen-based tasks which lack in ecological validity. We tested whether changes in eye blink rate during a naturalistic effortful control task differ as a function of parent-reported effortful control and internalizing behaviors. Children played a Jenga-like game with an experimenter, but for each trial the experimenter took an increasingly long time to take their turn. Blinks-per-second were computed during each wait period. Multilevel modeling examined the relation between duration of wait period, effortful control, and internalizing behaviors on eye blink rate. We found a significant 3-way interaction between effortful control, internalizing behaviors, and duration of the wait period. Probing this interaction revealed that for children with low reported internalizing behaviors (-1 SD) and high reported effortful control (+1 SD), eye blink rate significantly decreased as they waited longer to take their turn. These findings index task-related changes in midbrain dopamine activity in relation to naturalistic task demands, and that these changes may vary as a function of individual differences in effortful control and internalizing behaviors. We discuss possible top-down mechanisms that may underlie these differences

Variability in Caregiver Attention Bias to Threat: A Goldilocks Effect in Infant Emotional Development?

Attention biases to threat are considered part of the etiology of anxiety disorders. Attention bias variability (ABV) quantifies intraindividual fluctuations in attention biases, and may better capture the relation between attention biases and psychopathology risk versus mean levels of attention bias. ABV to threat has been associated with attentional control and emotion regulation, which may impact how caregivers interact with their child. In a relatively diverse sample of infants (50% white, 50.7% female), we asked how caregiver ABV to threat related to trajectories of infant negative affect across the first two years of life. Families were part of a multi-site longitudinal study, and data were collected from 4 to 24 months of age. Multilevel modeling examined the effect of average caregiver attention biases on changes in negative affect. We found a significant interaction between infant age and caregiver ABV to threat. Probing this interaction revealed that infants of caregivers with high ABV showed decreases in negative affect over time, while infants of caregivers with low-to-average ABV showed potentiated increases in negative affect. We discuss how both high and extreme patterns of ABV may relate to deviations in developmental trajectories

Individual differences in developmental trajectories of affective attention and relations with competence and social reticence with peers

This study examined individual differences in affective attention trajectories in infancy and relations with competence and social reticence at 24 months. Data collection spanned 2017 to 2021. Infants (N = 297, 53% White, 49% reported as assigned male at birth) recruited in South Central and Central Pennsylvania and Northern New Jersey provided eye-tracking data at five assessments. Caregivers self-reported anxiety symptoms, infant temperamental negative affect and infant competence at the final assessment. A subgroup of infants participated in a peer social dyad at the final assessment. Using group-based trajectory modeling, we found three groups of infants with different affective attention trajectories: Affective Attention Increasers (n = 73), Affective Attention Shifters (n = 156) and Affective Attention Decreasers (n = 50). Affective Attention Increasers exhibited low intercepts with steep attention increases, particularly to angry facial configurations. Affective Attention Shifters exhibited middle intercepts with attention decreases to facial configurations, but an attention increase to angry facial configurations. Affective Attention Decreasers exhibited high intercepts with steep attention decreases. Infants in the Affective Attention Increasers group exhibited more competence when accounting for caregiver anxiety symptoms and infant temperamental negative affect. Group membership was not related to social reticence during the peer social dyad. Infants higher in temperamental negative affect exhibited more social reticence, particularly as the social dyad continued. Our results provide evidence for individual differences in developmental trajectories of affective attention and relations with toddler social behavior. Our results are primarily generalizable to rural and urban populations in the Mid-Atlantic United States

Seeing Eye to Eye With Threat: Atypical Threat Bias in Children With 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome.

Individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) show high rates of anxiety associated with their increased risk of developing schizophrenia. Biased attention is associated with anxiety and is important to investigate in those with 22q11DS given this association. We analyzed attention bias to emotional faces in 7- to 17-year olds with 22q11DS and typically developing controls (TD) using a dot probe threat bias paradigm. We measured response time, eye tracking, and pupilometry. Those with 22q11DS showed no significant changes in early versus late trials, whereas those who were TD showed differing patterns in both gaze and pupilometry over time. The patterns in those who are TD may indicate adaptation that is lacking or slower in individuals with 22q11DS

A history of childhood behavioral inhibition and enhanced response monitoring in adolescence are linked to clinical anxiety

BACKGROUND: Behaviorally inhibited (BI) children who also exhibit enhanced response monitoring might be at particularly high risk for anxiety disorders. The current study tests the hypothesis that response monitoring, as manifest in the error-related negativity (ERN), moderates the association between BI and anxiety. METHODS: Participants (n = 113; 73 male) assessed for early-childhood BI were re-assessed as adolescents with a clinical interview and a flanker paradigm that generated behavioral data and event-related potentials (ERPs). Risk for anxiety disorders in adolescents was examined as a function of childhood-BI status and adolescent performance on the flanker paradigm. RESULTS: Adolescents with childhood BI displayed ERP evidence of enhanced response monitoring, manifest as large ERNs. The ERN moderated the relationship between early BI and later clinically significant disorders. CONCLUSIONS: Physiological measures of response monitoring might moderate associations between early-childhood BI and risk for psychopathology. The subset of children with BI and enhanced response monitoring might face greater risk for later-life clinical anxiety than children with either BI or enhanced response monitoring alone

Attention Biases to Threat in Infants and Parents: Links to Parental and Infant Anxiety Dispositions

Parent-to-child transmission of information processing biases to threat is a potential causal mechanism in the family aggregation of anxiety symptoms and traits. This study is the first to investigate the link between infants’ and parents’ attention bias to dynamic threat-relevant (versus happy) emotional expressions. Moreover, the associations between infant attention and anxiety dispositions in infants and parents were explored. Using a cross-sectional design, we tested 211 infants in three age groups: 5-to-7-month-olds (n = 71), 11-to-13-month-olds (n = 73), and 17-to-19-month-olds (n = 67), and 216 parents (153 mothers). Infant and parental dwell times to angry and fearful versus happy facial expressions were measured via eye-tracking. The parents also reported on their anxiety and stress. Ratings of infant temperamental fear and distress were averaged across both parents. Parents and infants tended to show an attention bias for fearful faces with marginally longer dwell times to fearful versus happy faces. Parents dwelled longer on angry versus happy faces, whereas infants showed an avoidant pattern with longer dwell times to happy versus angry expressions. There was a significant positive association between infant and parent attention to emotional expressions. Parental anxiety dispositions were not related to their own or their infant’s attention bias. No significant link emerged between infants’ temperament and attention bias. We conclude that an association between parental and infant attention may already be evident in the early years of life, whereas a link between anxiety dispositions and attention biases may not hold in community samples