Bartoszek Gregory, Winer E Samuel
University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychology, 1007 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA.
Mississippi State University, PO Box 6161, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2015 Mar;46:1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2014.07.012. Epub 2014 Aug 8.
Much research documents that anxiety is related to the avoidance of threatening information. Research is also beginning to suggest that depression is related to a lack of approach toward positive information. However, many questions remain regarding the specificity and robustness of these effects. The goal of the present study was to examine specific motivational patterns differentiating between anxiety and depression.
The current study used the approach-avoidance task (AAT) to further investigate these phenomena. Spider-fearful, depressed, and non-fearful/non-depressed (control) participants pulled or pushed a joystick lever in response to positive, neutral, and negative (spider and spider-unrelated) pictures. Unlike in previous AAT studies, duration times (DTs) of joystick movements were examined in addition to reaction times (RTs).
As hypothesized, in contrast to depressed and control groups, spider-fearful participants exhibited avoidance tendencies by evidencing slower RTs when pulling the joystick in response to spider versus neutral pictures. As further hypothesized, depressed participants exhibited diminished approach motivation as evidenced by their pulling positive pictures for a shorter duration than neutral pictures, in comparison to the control group.
Participants in our study were from a non-clinical student sample and further research is required for generalization to spider phobia and major depressive disorder.
These findings inform theoretical understanding of the specific motivational tendencies of anxiety and depression, and introduce a modification of the AAT that, if incorporated in clinical settings, would increase the specificity and success of cognitive bias modifications.
大量研究表明焦虑与回避威胁性信息有关。研究也开始表明抑郁与缺乏对积极信息的趋近有关。然而，关于这些效应的特异性和稳健性仍有许多问题。本研究的目的是检验区分焦虑和抑郁的特定动机模式。
本研究使用趋近-回避任务（AAT）来进一步探究这些现象。怕蜘蛛的、抑郁的以及无畏/无抑郁（对照）的参与者根据正性、中性和负性（蜘蛛及与蜘蛛无关）图片拉动或推动操纵杆。与之前的AAT研究不同，除了反应时间（RTs）外，还检查了操纵杆移动的持续时间（DTs）。
如假设的那样，与抑郁组和对照组相比，怕蜘蛛的参与者表现出回避倾向，即对蜘蛛图片而非中性图片拉动操纵杆时反应时间较慢。如进一步假设的那样，抑郁的参与者表现出趋近动机减弱，与对照组相比，他们拉动正性图片的持续时间比中性图片短。
我们研究中的参与者来自非临床学生样本，需要进一步研究以推广至蜘蛛恐惧症和重度抑郁症。
这些发现有助于从理论上理解焦虑和抑郁的特定动机倾向，并引入了AAT的一种改进方法，若应用于临床环境，将提高认知偏差矫正的特异性和成功率。
