School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
eCentreClinic, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2017 Nov;45(8):1635-1646. doi: 10.1007/s10802-017-0261-1.
Children with asthma have a high prevalence of anxiety disorders, however, very little is known about the mechanisms that confer vulnerability for anxiety in this population. This study investigated whether children with asthma and anxiety disorders display attentional biases towards threatening stimuli, similar to what has been seen in children with anxiety disorders more generally. We also examined the relationships between attentional biases and anxiety symptomatology and asthma control for children with asthma. Ninety-three children, aged 8-13, took part in the study and were recruited into one of four conditions (asthma/anxiety, asthma, anxiety, control). Asthma was medically confirmed and anxiety was assessed through clinical interview. We used self- and parent-report questionnaires to measure child asthma (ATAQ) and anxiety (SCAS, CASI) variables. Participants completed a visual dot-probe task designed to measure attentional bias towards two types of stimuli: asthma related words and general threat words, as well as tasks to assess reading ability and attentional control. Results showed that attentional biases did not differ between the groups, although children with anxiety disorders displayed poorer attentional control. A significant correlation was found between poor asthma control and an attentional bias of asthma stimuli. While we found no evidence that anxiety disorders in children with asthma were associated with threat- or asthma-related attentional biases, preliminary evidence suggested that children with poor asthma control displayed biases towards asthma-specific stimuli. Future research is needed to explore whether these attentional biases are adaptive.
哮喘儿童的焦虑障碍患病率很高，然而，对于这一人群中易患焦虑的机制却知之甚少。本研究旨在探讨哮喘伴焦虑障碍的儿童是否存在对威胁性刺激的注意力偏向，类似于一般焦虑障碍儿童的情况。我们还研究了哮喘儿童的注意力偏向与焦虑症状和哮喘控制之间的关系。93 名 8-13 岁的儿童参加了这项研究，并被分为以下四种情况之一：哮喘伴焦虑、哮喘、焦虑、对照组。哮喘通过医学确认，焦虑通过临床访谈进行评估。我们使用自我报告和家长报告问卷来测量儿童的哮喘（ATAQ）和焦虑（SCAS、CASI）变量。参与者完成了一项视觉点探测任务，旨在测量对两种类型的刺激的注意力偏向：哮喘相关词汇和一般威胁词汇，以及评估阅读能力和注意力控制的任务。结果表明，各组之间的注意力偏向没有差异，尽管焦虑障碍儿童的注意力控制较差。我们发现，哮喘控制不佳与对哮喘刺激的注意力偏向之间存在显著相关性。虽然我们没有证据表明哮喘儿童的焦虑障碍与威胁或哮喘相关的注意力偏向有关，但初步证据表明，哮喘控制不佳的儿童对哮喘特异性刺激存在偏向。需要进一步的研究来探讨这些注意力偏向是否具有适应性。
