Waters Allison M, Forrest Kylee, Peters Rosie-Mae, Bradley Brendan P, Mogg Karin
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2015 Mar;46:158-63. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2014.10.002.
Children of parents with emotional disorders have an increased risk for developing anxiety and depressive disorders. Yet the mechanisms that contribute to this increased risk are poorly understood. The present study aimed to examine attention biases in children as a function of maternal lifetime emotional disorders and maternal attention biases.
There were 134 participants, including 38 high-risk children, and their mothers who had lifetime emotional disorders; and 29 low-risk children, and their mothers without lifetime emotional disorders. Mothers and children completed a visual probe task with emotional face pairs presented for 500 ms.
Attention bias in children did not significantly differ solely as a function of whether or not their mothers had lifetime emotional disorders. However, attention bias in high-risk children was significantly related to their mothers' attention bias. Specifically, children of mothers with lifetime emotional disorders showed a greater negative attention bias if their mothers had a greater tendency to direct attention away from positive information.
This study was cross-sectional in nature, and therefore unable to assess long-term predictive effects. Also, just one exposure duration of 500 ms was utilised.
Attention bias for negative information is greater in offspring of mothers who have lifetime emotional disorders and a reduced positive bias, which could be a risk marker for the development of emotional disorders in children.
父母患有情绪障碍的儿童患焦虑症和抑郁症的风险增加。然而，导致这种风险增加的机制尚不清楚。本研究旨在探讨儿童的注意偏向与母亲终生情绪障碍及母亲注意偏向之间的关系。
共有134名参与者，包括38名高危儿童及其患有终生情绪障碍的母亲；以及29名低危儿童及其无终生情绪障碍的母亲。母亲和孩子完成了一项视觉探测任务，呈现情绪面孔对500毫秒。
儿童的注意偏向并不会仅因母亲是否患有终生情绪障碍而有显著差异。然而，高危儿童的注意偏向与母亲的注意偏向显著相关。具体而言，如果母亲有更倾向于将注意力从积极信息上转移开的趋势，那么患有终生情绪障碍母亲的孩子会表现出更大的负性注意偏向。
本研究本质上是横断面研究，因此无法评估长期预测效应。此外，仅使用了500毫秒这一暴露持续时间。
患有终生情绪障碍且积极偏向降低的母亲的后代对负面信息的注意偏向更大，这可能是儿童情绪障碍发展的一个风险指标。
