Threat bias in attention orienting: evidence of specificity in a large community-based study

Abstract

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.