Jansson Billy, Najström Mats
Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
J Anxiety Disord. 2009 Apr;23(3):374-80. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2008.12.001. Epub 2008 Dec 7.
Biased processing of threatening information may play a casual role in the development of anxiety disorders. Even though empirical evidence points to the fact that preattentive bias can predict subjectively experienced distress in response to a stressor, it is still unknown whether it could be useful in predicting the physiological reactivity in response to a stressor. In the present study, the emotional Stroop task was used to measure preattentive bias. Whereas Stroop interference for masked threat words (i.e., preattentive bias) was found to be positively associated with emotional distress (self-reported) in response to a laboratory stressor, this association was reversed when the autonomic reactivity (electrodermal activity) was used as a measure of emotional response to the very same stressor. Also, neither of these effects were a function of pre-existing anxiety levels. The negative association between preattentive bias and autonomic reactivity corresponds to the autonomic inflexibility seen in clinical anxiety (or very high scores of trait anxiety) when exposed to stressful events. Results were discussed in terms of an inability to automatically inhibit the processing of threatening cues that seems to be a vulnerability marker for anxiety.
对威胁性信息的偏向性加工可能在焦虑症的发展中起偶然作用。尽管实证证据表明，注意前偏向能够预测个体对应激源主观体验到的痛苦，但它是否有助于预测对应激源的生理反应性仍不明确。在本研究中，采用情绪Stroop任务来测量注意前偏向。结果发现，对掩蔽威胁词的Stroop干扰（即注意前偏向）与对实验室应激源的情绪痛苦（自我报告）呈正相关，但当使用自主反应性（皮肤电活动）作为对同一应激源情绪反应的指标时，这种关联则相反。此外，这些效应均与先前存在的焦虑水平无关。注意前偏向与自主反应性之间的负相关，与临床焦虑（或特质焦虑得分极高）患者在暴露于应激事件时出现的自主反应僵化相对应。研究结果从无法自动抑制对威胁性线索的加工这一角度进行了讨论，这种无法抑制的情况似乎是焦虑症的一个易感性标志。
