Nozadi Sara S, Troller-Renfree Sonya, White Lauren K, Frenkel Tahl, Degnan Kathryn A, Bar-Haim Yair, Pine Daniel, Fox Nathan A
University of New Mexico, Department of Individual, Family and Community Education.
University of Maryland, Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology.
J Exp Psychopathol. 2016 Nov;7(3):451-465. doi: 10.5127/jep.052515. Epub 2016 Jun 26.
The current study aimed to extend the results of White et al. (2015) by examining the moderating role of attention biases at age 5 on the relations between Behavioral Inhibition (BI) during toddlerhood and anxiety symptoms at age 10. Children's BI at 2 and 3 years of age was measured using laboratory assessments, and attention bias towards threat was assessed using a dot-probe task at age 5. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used to identify the probability for children's membership in an anxiety class, which reflected primary anxiety at age 10 that was not comorbid with symptoms of inattention. Maternal and self-report measures of children's mental health, collected via questionnaires and semi-structured diagnostic interviews, were used as indicators for the LCA. The results revealed that threat-related attention biases moderated the relation between BI and anxiety, such that BI positively predicted the probability of being in the anxiety class only when children had an attention bias towards threat. BI was unrelated to anxiety when children had no attention bias or an attention bias away from threat. These results indicated that attention biases during preschool may differentiate between inhibited children who are at heightened risk for anxiety later in childhood from those who are not. The results are discussed in a framework detailing the role of attention biases in increasing the sensitivity for anxiety-related problems in children who display high levels of BI during early childhood.
本研究旨在扩展怀特等人（2015年）的研究结果，通过考察5岁时注意力偏差在幼儿期行为抑制（BI）与10岁时焦虑症状之间关系中的调节作用。使用实验室评估来测量儿童在2岁和3岁时的BI，并在5岁时使用点探测任务评估对威胁的注意力偏差。潜在类别分析（LCA）用于确定儿童属于焦虑类别的概率，这反映了10岁时未与注意力不集中症状共病的原发性焦虑。通过问卷和半结构化诊断访谈收集的儿童心理健康的母亲报告和自我报告测量结果，被用作LCA的指标。结果显示，与威胁相关的注意力偏差调节了BI与焦虑之间的关系，即只有当儿童对威胁存在注意力偏差时，BI才正向预测处于焦虑类别的概率。当儿童没有注意力偏差或对威胁存在注意力偏差时，BI与焦虑无关。这些结果表明，学龄前的注意力偏差可能会区分出在童年后期患焦虑症风险较高的抑制型儿童和未患焦虑症的抑制型儿童。研究结果在一个框架中进行了讨论，该框架详细阐述了注意力偏差在增强幼儿期表现出高水平BI的儿童对焦虑相关问题的敏感性方面的作用。
