Morriss Jayne, McSorley Eugene, van Reekum Carien M
a Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences , University of Reading , Reading , UK.
b School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences , University of Reading , Reading , UK.
Cogn Emot. 2018 Aug;32(5):953-962. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1370418. Epub 2017 Aug 24.
Attentional bias to uncertain threat is associated with anxiety disorders. Here we examine the extent to which emotional face distractors (happy, angry and neutral) and individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (IU), impact saccades in two versions of the "follow a cross" task. In both versions of the follow the cross task, the probability of receiving an emotional face distractor was 66.7%. To increase perceived uncertainty regarding the location of the face distractors, in one of the tasks additional non-predictive cues were presented before the onset of the face distractors and target. We did not find IU to impact saccades towards non-cued face distractors. However, we found IU, over Trait Anxiety, to impact saccades towards non-predictive cueing of face distractors. Under these conditions, IU individuals' eyes were pulled towards angry face distractors and away from happy face distractors overall, and the speed of this deviation of the eyes was determined by the combination of the cue and emotion of the face. Overall, these results suggest a specific role of IU on attentional bias to threat during uncertainty. These findings highlight the potential of intolerance of uncertainty-based mechanisms to help understand anxiety disorder pathology and inform potential treatment targets.
对不确定威胁的注意偏向与焦虑症有关。在此，我们研究了情绪面孔干扰物（开心、愤怒和中性）以及不确定性不耐受（IU）的个体差异在两种版本的“跟随十字”任务中对扫视的影响程度。在两个版本的跟随十字任务中，出现情绪面孔干扰物的概率均为66.7%。为了增加对面孔干扰物位置的感知不确定性，在其中一个任务中，在面孔干扰物和目标出现之前还会呈现额外的非预测性线索。我们没有发现IU会影响对无线索面孔干扰物的扫视。然而，我们发现，与特质焦虑相比，IU会影响对面孔干扰物非预测性线索的扫视。在这些条件下，总体而言，IU个体的眼睛会被愤怒面孔干扰物吸引，而远离开心面孔干扰物，并且眼睛这种偏离的速度由线索和面孔情绪的组合决定。总体而言，这些结果表明IU在不确定性期间对威胁的注意偏向上具有特定作用。这些发现凸显了基于不确定性不耐受机制在帮助理解焦虑症病理和为潜在治疗靶点提供信息方面的潜力。
