Burgess Melissa M, Cabeleira Cindy M, Cabrera Isabel, Bucks Romola S, MacLeod Colin
a Elizabeth Rutherford Memorial Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion , University of Western Australia , Crawley , WA , Australia.
Cogn Emot. 2014;28(1):84-97. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2013.802224. Epub 2013 Jun 14.
Previous research has not adequately assessed the independent contributions of component attentional processes to anxiety-linked biases. MacLeod and Sadler developed a novel, lexical decision task using negative and neutral word stimuli, to enable the independent measurement of attentional engagement and disengagement. Their results suggest that anxiety-linked attentional biases are associated with facilitated attentional engagement with negative information. The present study aimed to determine the replicability of these findings, with two important extensions. First, this study included positive word stimuli in the lexical decision task, to determine whether anxiety-linked attentional biases exist only towards negative information, or toward emotionally arousing information in general. Second, this study explored age-related differences in anxiety-linked attentional biases. Younger (N=32) and older adults (N=32) with both high and low trait anxiety completed the lexical decision task. The results suggest that heightened anxiety may be associated with a deficit in engaging with positive words. No age-related differences in anxiety-linked attentional biases were apparent.
以往的研究尚未充分评估注意力加工过程的各个组成部分对焦虑相关偏差的独立作用。麦克劳德和萨德勒开发了一种新颖的词汇判断任务，使用消极和中性的单词刺激，以实现对注意力的参与和脱离的独立测量。他们的结果表明，与焦虑相关的注意力偏差与对负面信息的注意力参与增强有关。本研究旨在确定这些发现的可重复性，并进行两个重要的扩展。首先，本研究在词汇判断任务中纳入了积极的单词刺激，以确定与焦虑相关的注意力偏差是否仅针对负面信息，还是一般针对情绪性唤起信息。其次，本研究探讨了与焦虑相关的注意力偏差的年龄差异。具有高特质焦虑和低特质焦虑的年轻人（N = 32）和老年人（N = 32）完成了词汇判断任务。结果表明，焦虑加剧可能与对积极单词的参与不足有关。与焦虑相关的注意力偏差没有明显的年龄差异。
