Joint Doctoral Program of San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego, CA 92120, USA.
Depress Anxiety. 2012 Mar;29(3):243-9. doi: 10.1002/da.20900. Epub 2011 Sep 21.
The ability to attend to relevant visual information in a proficient manner is central to most day-to-day tasks. Research suggests, however, that this ability is compromised by anxiety such that anxiety results in narrowing the focus of visual attention.
In the current study (N = 58), we used the Attention Scope Task [1999: Gerontology 45:102-109] to examine the hypothesis that low-anxious individuals would be more proficient than high-anxious individuals in their scope of attention, that is, high-anxious individuals would have a larger scope of visual attention than low-anxious individuals. Additionally, we hypothesized that low-anxious individuals would be more proficient than high-anxious individuals in their ability to expand their scope of attention.
Results revealed that, compared to low-anxious individuals, high-anxious individuals were impaired only in their ability to expand their scope of attention from a small area to a larger one. Inclusion of a depressed control group in the study revealed that our findings are specific to the effect of anxiety and not depressive symptoms.
Thus, high-anxious individuals do not appear to have a smaller absolute scope of attention but instead seem to have difficulty expanding their attention scope dynamically. We discuss our results in relation to cognitive inflexibility in anxiety.
以熟练的方式关注相关视觉信息的能力是大多数日常任务的核心。然而，研究表明，这种能力会因焦虑而受到损害，以至于焦虑会缩小视觉注意力的焦点。
在当前的研究中（N=58），我们使用注意力范围任务[1999：老年学 45:102-109]来检验以下假设：低焦虑个体在注意力范围上比高焦虑个体更熟练，也就是说，高焦虑个体的视觉注意力范围比低焦虑个体更大。此外，我们假设低焦虑个体在扩大注意力范围的能力上比高焦虑个体更熟练。
结果表明，与低焦虑个体相比，高焦虑个体仅在将注意力范围从小区域扩展到大区域的能力上受到损害。在研究中纳入抑郁对照组表明，我们的发现是专门针对焦虑的影响，而不是抑郁症状。
因此，高焦虑个体似乎没有更小的绝对注意力范围，而是在动态扩展注意力范围方面存在困难。我们根据焦虑中的认知灵活性讨论了我们的结果。
