Expectancy bias in trait anxiety.

The ability of anxious and control participants to learn about signals for danger and safety was tested within an autonomic conditioned inhibition (A+/AB-) procedure. Only participants who could verbalize the differential contingencies between the stimuli and shock (aware participants) showed discrimination on electrodermal and shock expectancy measures. In Exp 1, aware high-anxious participants showed similar responding to control participants. However unaware high-anxious participants showed heightened shock expectancy to all stimuli. Exp 2 replicated this expectancy bias in anxious unaware participants controlling for shock intensity. In both experiments, expectancy bias was associated primarily with anxiety rather than depression. Results support the notion of an interpretive bias in anxious participants under ambiguous threat, consistent with recent findings from information-processing research on linguistic stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Induced emotional interpretation bias and anxiety.

Five experiments are reported showing that the interpretation of personally relevant emotional information can be modified by systematic exposure to congruent exemplars. Participants were induced to interpret ambiguous information in a relatively threatening or a benign way. Comparison with a baseline condition suggested that negative and positive induction had similar but opposing effects. Induction of an interpretative bias did not require active generation of personally relevant meanings, but such active processing was necessary before state anxiety changed in parallel with the induced interpretative bias. These findings provide evidence consistent with a causal link between the deployment of interpretative bias and anxiety and reveal something of the processes underlying this association. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive engagement and story comprehension in typically developing children and children with ADHD from preschool through elementary school.

The present study examined children's cognitive engagement with television as a function of the continuity of central or incidental content and whether this varied with age and clinical status. In Experiment 1, 9- to 11-year-old children's response times on a secondary task were slower the later a probe occurred in a sequence of central events, and response times predicted recall. Experiment 2 extended these results to 6- to 8-year-old children. Experiment 3 revealed that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) failed to show the pattern consistently observed for comparison children. The results support the hypothesis that typically developing children build a representation during viewing that reflects the causal structure of the televised story but that this skill is deficient in 4- to 9-year-old children with ADHD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of a positive emotional state on interpretation bias for threat in children with anxiety disorders.

The authors examined the effect of a positive emotional state on interpretation bias for threat in children with anxiety disorders. Participants were 34 children with anxiety disorders and 34 children without any psychological disorders who were randomly assigned to either a positive or neutral emotion induction condition. Consistent with the broaden-and-build theory, children with anxiety disorders exhibited an interpretation bias for threat, but not when they were in a positive emotional state. Furthermore, results indicated that positive emotional state made a unique prediction of interpretation bias score, whereas state anxiety did not. Findings are discussed with reference to theory, clinical implications, and suggestions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional bias for threat in older adults: Moderation of the positivity bias by trait anxiety and stimulus modality.

Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that emotion regulation goals motivate older adults to preferentially allocate attention to positive stimuli and away from negative stimuli. This study examined whether anxiety moderates the effect of the positivity bias on attention for threat. The authors employed the dot probe task to compare subliminal and supraliminal attention for threat in 103 young and 44 older adults. Regardless of anxiety, older but not young adults demonstrated a vigilant–avoidant response to angry faces. Anxiety influenced older adults’ attention such that anxious individuals demonstrated a vigilant–avoidant reaction to sad faces but an avoidant–vigilant reaction to negative words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of prospective memory in typically developing children.

Objective: This study aimed to use specifically designed tasks to capture time-based, activity-based, and event-based prospective memory (PM) performance in typically developing school-age children. Method: Two PM tasks (Fishing Game & Happy Week) were used to examine the developmental patterns of PM in these children. Retrospective memory (RM) was also examined in these tasks. A total of 120 children aged between 7 and 12 years (10 girls and 10 boys in each age band) were recruited. Tests of working memory, inhibition, and IQ were also administered. Results: The age effect on PM accuracy was significant, with improvements identified between ages 7 to 8 and 10 to 11 years. For both tasks, performance on the time-based PM task was significantly poorer than that on the event-based PM task, which in turn was significantly poorer than that on the activity-based PM task. In terms of errors, results indicated that while errors associated with the PM component of the tasks decreased with age, errors associated with the RM component showed an inverted-U shape. The different patterns of errors suggest qualitative as well as quantitative differences in PM development in children. Finally, IQ, working memory, and inhibition were found to relate to PM when age was partialed out. Conclusions: Results of the study highlight the importance of contextual cues, such as activities and events, for prospective remembering in children. In addition, they have provided a general picture of PM development in school-age children and have implications for educators and parents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prepared for the worst: Readiness to acquire threat bias and susceptibility to elevate trait anxiety.

Although people differ in their susceptibility to elevate trait anxiety in response to extended stress, little is known about the cognitive substrate of this particular individual difference. We report three studies designed to evaluate the hypothesis that individual differences in readiness to acquire an attentional bias toward threat cues, in response to a contingency that makes the acquisition of such a bias adaptive, underlie individual differences in susceptibility to elevate trait anxiety in response to extended stress. Our findings confirm that the ease with which such a threat bias can be transiently evoked by experimental conditions that encourage its acquisition predicts the degree to which trait anxiety later becomes elevated by extended exposure to a mild stressor. Furthermore, this reflects the fact that such early measures of attentional bias plasticity predict the later naturalistic acquisition of attentional bias in response to subsequent stress, which in turn is associated with a consequent increase in trait anxiety level. These findings are consistent with our proposed account of individual differences in susceptibility to elevate trait anxiety in response to stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive bias and depression in psychiatrically disturbed children and adolescents.

Developed a cognitive bias questionnaire for children (CBQC) to examine the relation between cognitive distortion and depression in 39 psychiatrically disturbed 8–16 yr olds. Results indicate that the Depressed–Distorted scale from the CBQC was significantly correlated with Ss' psychiatric and self-reported ratings of depression and could significantly discriminate affective from nonaffective disorders. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguishing between cognitive and somatic trait and state anxiety in children.

Attempted to develop self-report measures of cognitive and somatic trait and state anxiety for children and to evaluate the utility of distinguishing between cognitive and somatic anxiety. 67 4th-grade children anticipated and then performed a mathematics task either in a high- or low-stress condition. While Ss anticipated performing the task, measures of 7 cognitive behaviors were obtained by means of both a "think aloud" procedure and a questionnaire. Results indicate that the trait and state measures of cognitive and somatic anxiety were reliable. The trait measures of cognitive and somatic anxiety were relatively impervious to induced anxiety states. As expected, cognitive trait anxiety but not somatic trait or state anxiety was related to task performance. High cognitive state and/or trait anxiety was associated with more preoccupation and performance denigration as well as taking less of an analytic attitude toward the situation. Somatic trait and state anxiety were associated with preoccupation. Results support the construct validity of the measures developed and the utility of distinguishing between cognitive and somatic anxiety in children. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive processing bias of children in a real life stress situation and a neutral situation

The aim of this study was to investigate whether nonclinically anxious children, like anxious adults, favor the processing of threatening or concern-related information. Two experiments, using an emotional Stroop task, were carried out in high anxious and low anxious children aged 8 to 9 to examine whether a medical stressor elicited a processing bias. Results indicated that, independently of the presence of the medical stressor, all children give high priority to the processing of information related to physical harm. Moreover, like anxious adults in other studies, high anxious children showed a processing bias for generally threatening information. This bias was absent in the vicinity of an acute stressor and it was only significant in girls. However, unlike low anxious adults, low anxious girls also showed this processing bias. These results are interpreted in terms of cognitive developmental differences in the ability to inhibit the processing of meaningful information.     

The structure of mother–child play: Young children with Down syndrome and typically developing children.

This study explored developmental changes and effects of Down syndrome on mothers' structuring of their children's play. Mothers and their young children with Down syndrome (n?=?28) were compared with socioeconomically matched samples of mothers and their mental age-matched (n?=?28) and chronological age-matched (n?=?28) typically developing children. Mothers of typically developing children exhibited more object demonstrations with their developmentally younger children, who exhibited less object play. Mothers of children with Down syndrome were more directive and supportive than were mothers of younger and older typically developing children, who did not differ in their frequencies of these behaviors. More maternal supportive object behavior was associated with more object play and vocalization by children with Down syndrome. Mothers and children in all 3 groups were contingently responsive to their partners' behavioral signals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory bias for threatening information in anxiety and anxiety disorders: A meta-analytic review.

Although some theories suggest that anxious individuals selectively remember threatening stimuli, findings remain contradictory despite a considerable amount of research. A quantitative integration of 165 studies with 9,046 participants (clinical and nonclinical samples) examined whether a memory bias exists and which moderator variables influence its magnitude. Implicit memory bias was investigated in lexical decision/stimulus identification and word-stem completion paradigms; explicit memory bias was investigated in recognition and recall paradigms. Overall, effect sizes showed no significant impact of anxiety on implicit memory and recognition. Analyses indicated a memory bias for recall, whose magnitude depended on experimental study procedures like the encoding procedure or retention interval. Anxiety influenced recollection of previous experiences; anxious individuals favored threat-related information. Across all paradigms, clinical status was not significantly linked to effect sizes, indicating no qualitative difference in information processing between anxiety patients and high-anxious persons. The large discrepancy between study effects in recall and recognition indicates that future research is needed to identify moderator variables for avoidant and preferred remembering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Defensive attribution of responsibility: Evidence for an arousal-based motivational bias.

Conducted 2 experiments with female undergraduates to determine whether arousal plays a central role in the defensive attribution process. Defensive attribution theorists presume that observing another's unwarranted victimization arouses a negative affective state by threatening observers with the prospect that similarly capricious misfortune could occur to them. Observers are thought to defend cognitively against the threat by distorting their perceptual judgments of the victim's causal role in his or her own victimization. In Exp I, 48 Ss completed attitudinal questionnaires before reading a bogus account of a female student's sexual victimization. Ss indicated their opinions of the morality, intelligence, and responsibility of the victim. In Exp II, 56 Ss completed the same social perception task under conditions of private self-awareness and personal similarity/dissimilarity. Results of both experiments provide convergent evidence that arousal plays a central role in the defensive attribution process. For instance, a personally similar victim was assigned less responsibility for her victimization than was a dissimilar victim. The implications of a distinction between behavioral and characterological responsibility for the defensive attribution process are also examined and discussed. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory bias in clinical anxiety.

Predictions from a cognitive schema model of anxiety were tested by comparing generally anxious patients and normal controls on their incidental recall of positive and negative, threatening and nonthreatening, self- and other-referenced words. There was no evidence of a self-referent recall bias favoring negative or threatening words in anxiety. Contrary to expectation, the results indicated relatively poorer memory for threatening material in anxious patients. We argue that the cognitive schema model could not adequately account for these and other recent research findings and suggest an alternative formulation of information-processing biases in anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpersonal perception: Cognitive complexity and trait implication.

Demonstrated that the evaluative connotations of personality characteristics have a more pervasive effect on interpersonal judgment for persons low rather than high in cognitive complexity. It was found that low-complexity Ss saw equally desirable traits as going together more often, and unequally desirable traits as going together less often than did high-complexity Ss. The need for conceptualizing interpersonal judgment as partly a function of the interaction between cognitive complexity and the evaluative requirements of the task was stressed. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linguistic intergroup bias: Evidence for in-group-protective motivation.

Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) is the tendency to describe positive in-group and negative out-group behaviors more abstractly than negative in-group and positive out-group behaviors. Two experiments investigated the role of in-group-protective motives, by varying threat to ingroup identity of hunters vs. environmentalists (Experiment 1, N?=?160) and northern vs. southern Italians (Experiment 2, N?=?212). Participants whose in-group had or had not been threatened described positive and negative behaviors of in-group and out-group protagonists. In both experiments, the LIB was greater under identity threat. Experiment 1 also showed that LIB was positively related to postexperimental but not to preexperimental individual and collective self-esteem. Results suggest that the magnitude of LIB depends on in-group-protective motivation and that in-group-favoring language may be functional to self-esteem maintenance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive and behavioral therapy for musical-performance anxiety.

Compared the efficiency of cognitive-behavioral therapy, emphasizing self-instruction and attention-focusing techniques, with behavior rehearsal and with a waiting-list control in the treatment of debilitating musical-performance anxiety. Ss were 53 pianists (aged 12–53 yrs old) who experienced extreme anxiety in performing situations. Therapy sessions were conducted over a 3-wk period; Ss met 3 times in small groups for 1?–2 hrs and also completed homework assignments. Self-report (e.g., Subjective Stress Scale, Expectations of Personal Efficacy Scale for Musicians), behavioral, and physiological indexes of anxiety were collected at baseline, treatment termination, and follow-up intervals. Multivariate analyses indicated that both the cognitive-behavioral therapy and behavior-rehearsal programs were effective in reducing musical-performance anxiety in comparison to the control condition at the follow-up assessment, although there were no differences among groups at treatment termination. Cognitive therapy was more effective than the behavior-rehearsal program on several measures. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit memory bias in anxiety.

Previous investigations of recall and recognition for threatening information in clinically anxious subjects have yielded equivocal results. The present study contrasts implicit (word completion) with explicit (cued recall) memory and shows that indices of bias for emotional material derived from the two types of memory are independent of one another. The explicit measure was correlated with trait anxiety scores, but did not clearly distinguish between subjects with clinical anxiety states and normal control subjects. On the implicit memory measure, clinically anxious subjects produced more threat word completions, but only from a set to which they had recently been exposed. These results are taken as evidence that internal representations of threat words are more readily or more persistently activated in anxiety states, although they are not necessarily better elaborated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facilitating and debilitating trait anxiety, situational anxiety, and coping with an anticipated stressor: A process analysis.

19–23 yr-old college students completed anxiety and coping diaries during 10 periods that began 7 days before an academic stressor and continued through the evening after the stressor. Profile analysis was used to examine the anxiety and coping processes in relation to 2 trait anxiety grouping variables: debilitating and facilitating test anxiety (D-TA and F-TA). Anxiety and coping changed over time, and high and low levels of D-TA and F-TA were associated with different daily patterns of anxiety and coping. Participants with a debilitative, as opposed to facilitative, trait anxiety style had lower examination scores, higher anxiety, and less problem-solving coping. Covarying F-TA, high D-TA was associated with a pattern of higher levels of tension, worry, distraction, and avoidant coping, as well as lower levels of proactive coping. Covarying D-TA, high F-TA was associated with higher levels of tension (but not worry or distraction), support seeking, proactive and problem-solving coping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive reactivity and depressotypic information processing in children of depressed mothers.

Although high-risk research suggests that children of depressed mothers are at increased risk for psychological disorders, the mechanisms of this risk are not well understood. In the current study, the information processing of children of depressed mothers was compared with that of children whose mothers were not depressed. Half of each group received a priming induction designed to activate cognitive schemas prior to assessment. All children then completed a self-referent processing task that examined the recall of negative and positive information. Results indicate that when primed, at-risk children showed a less positive self-concept and more negative information processing than did the children in the other groups. These data may offer potential clues into the mechanisms of cognitive vulnerability in at-risk children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)