16 research outputs found

    Behavioral Inhibition and Attentional Control in Adolescents: Robust Relationships with Anxiety and Depression

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    Behavioral inhibition (BI) has been associated with the development of internalizing disorders in children and adolescents. It has further been shown that attentional control (AC) is negatively associated with internalizing problems. The combination of high BI and low AC may particularly lead to elevated symptomatology of internalizing behavior. This study broadens existing knowledge by investigating the additive and interacting effects of BI and AC on the various DSM-IV based internalizing dimensions. A sample of non-clinical adolescents (N = 1806, age M = 13.6 years), completed the Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System Scales (BIS/BAS), the attentional control subscale of the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ) and the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS). As expected, BI was positively, and AC was negatively related to internalizing dimensions, with stronger associations of BI than of AC with anxiety symptoms, and a stronger association of AC than of BI with depressive symptoms. AC moderated the association between BI and all measured internalizing dimensions (i.e., symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, separation anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and major depressive disorder). Since high AC may reduce the impact of high BI on the generation of internalizing symptoms, an intervention focused on changing AC may have potential for prevention and treatment of internalizing disorders

    Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study.

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    Research suggests that anxiety is maintained by an attentional bias to threat, and a growing base of evidence suggests that anxiety may additionally be associated with the deficient attentional processing of positive stimuli. The present study sought to examine whether such anxiety-linked attentional biases were associated with either stimulus driven or attentional control mechanisms of attentional selectivity. High and low trait anxious participants completed an emotional variant of an antisaccade task, in which they were required to prosaccade towards, or antisaccade away from a positive, neutral or threat stimulus, while eye movements were recorded. While low anxious participants were found to be slower to saccade in response to positive stimuli, irrespectively of whether a pro- or antisaccade was required, such a bias was absent in high anxious individuals. Analysis of erroneous antisaccades further revealed at trend level, that anxiety was associated with reduced peak velocity in response to threat. The findings suggest that anxiety is associated with the aberrant processing of positive stimuli, and greater compensatory efforts in the inhibition of threat. The findings further highlight the relevance of considering saccade peak velocity in the assessment of anxiety-linked attentional processing

    Attentional control theory in childhood: enhanced attentional capture by non-emotional and emotional distractors in anxiety and depression

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    Attentional control theory (ACT) proposes that anxiety is associated with executive functioning deficits. The theory has been widely investigated in adults. The current study tested whether symptoms of childhood anxiety and depression were associated with experimentally measured attentional control in the context of non-emotional and emotional stimuli. Sixty-one children (mean age = 9.23 years, range = 8.39 - 10.41) reported their trait anxiety and depression symptoms and completed three visual search tasks. The tasks used a variant of an irrelevant singleton paradigm and measured attentional capture by task-irrelevant non-emotional (color) and emotional (facial expressions) distractors. Significant attentional capture by both non-emotional and emotional distractors was observed, and was significantly correlated with trait anxiety and symptoms of depression. The strength of relationship between attentional capture and the symptoms did not differ significantly for non-emotional and emotional distractors. The results suggest that symptoms of childhood anxiety and depression are associated with poorer attentional control both in the presence of emotional and non-emotional stimuli, supporting ACT in younger populations. This attentional deficit in the context of non-emotional information might be as central to childhood internalizing symptoms as attentional biases often observed on tasks investigating processing of emotional stimuli

    Psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child Version in a clinical sample

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    Objective: The shortage of cross-culturally validated instruments limits the study and treatment of psychopathology in countries other than English-speaking ones. The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child Version (RCADS-CV) is a self-report questionnaire that assesses dimensions of DSM anxiety and depressive disorders in youths. In this present study, we aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the RCADS-CV in a clinical sample of children in Turkey. Method: The participants were 483 children aged 8–17 years old. Subjects were recruited from the following centers: Bezmialem University Hospital (55.7%), Kütahya Regional Hospital (17.4%), Istanbul Medical Faculty Hospital of the Istanbul University (16.7%), and Sakarya University Hospital (12.2%). A semi-structured diagnostic interview was carried out and the following measures were used: Children’s Depression Inventory, Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Results: Inter-scale reliability was strong/excellent with a Cronbach’s α of .95 and coefficients for the RCADS-CV subscales ranging from .75 to .86, demonstrating good internal consistency. Convergent and discriminant validity tests against both a semi-structured clinical interview and self-report measures suggested favorable properties. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original six-factor model. RCADS-CV showed greater correspondence to specific diagnoses in comparative tests with the existing measures of anxiety and depression. Conclusion: Overall, the study provides satisfactory evidence that the Turkish RCADS-CV yields valid scores for clinical purposes among Turkish children
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