Van Damme Stefaan, Crombez Geert
Department of Clinical Experimental and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2009 Jun;40(2):344-51. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2009.01.004. Epub 2009 Feb 5.
Attentional bias to threat has proven a robust phenomenon in adults but has shown to be less stable in children. This study investigated whether a generally slow response speed may potentially obscure the effects of threat upon attention in children. Three non-clinical samples of different age (children, adolescents, young adults) performed an emotional modification of the spatial cueing task. Attentional bias was examined by comparing cueing effects by fear-conditioned cues (CS+) and neutral cues (CS-). Overall, analyses showed no biased attention to threat, and no differences between age groups could be detected. Further analyses indicated that the inability to demonstrate attentional bias to threat in the present study was due to the large response speed variability in our sample. Quintile analyses of the reaction times revealed that an overall attentional bias to threat across all groups was present when only the fast reaction times were taken into account. Methodological implications for measuring attentional bias in young age groups are discussed.
对威胁的注意偏向在成年人中已被证明是一种普遍存在的现象，但在儿童中则不太稳定。本研究调查了总体反应速度较慢是否可能掩盖威胁对儿童注意力的影响。三个不同年龄的非临床样本（儿童、青少年、青年）进行了空间线索任务的情绪修正。通过比较恐惧条件线索（CS+）和中性线索（CS-）的线索效应来检查注意偏向。总体而言，分析显示对威胁没有偏向性注意，且未检测到年龄组之间的差异。进一步分析表明，在本研究中无法证明对威胁的注意偏向是由于样本中反应速度的巨大变异性。对反应时间的五分位数分析表明，当只考虑快速反应时间时，所有组对威胁都存在总体注意偏向。讨论了在年轻年龄组中测量注意偏向的方法学意义。
