The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, 228 Health and Human Development Building, University Park, PA, 16802, United States.
Cape Breton University, Department of Psychology, 1250 Grand Lake Road, Sydney, Nova Scotia, B1P 6L2, Canada.
Biol Psychol. 2020 Feb;150:107829. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.107829. Epub 2019 Nov 29.
Attentional bias to threat has been implicated in both internalizing and externalizing disorders. This study utilizes event-related potentials to examine early stages of perceptual attention to threatening (angry or fearful) versus neutral faces among a sample of 200 children ages 6-8 years from a low-income, urban community. Although both internalizing and externalizing symptoms were associated with processing biases, the nature of the bias differed between these two symptom domains. Internalizing symptoms were associated with heightened early attentional selection (P1) and later perceptual processing (P2) of fearful faces. In contrast, externalizing symptoms were associated with reduced early attentional selection (P1) of fearful faces and enhanced perceptual processing (P2) of neutral faces, possibly indicative of a hostile interpretation bias for ambiguous social cues. These results provide insight into the distinct cognitive-affective processes that may contribute to the etiology and maintenance of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology.
注意偏向于威胁已被牵涉到内化和外化障碍中。本研究利用事件相关电位，在一个来自低收入城市社区的 200 名 6-8 岁儿童样本中，检查了对威胁性（愤怒或恐惧）与中性面孔的知觉注意的早期阶段。虽然内化和外化症状都与处理偏差有关，但这两个症状领域的偏差性质不同。内化症状与恐惧面孔的早期注意选择（P1）和后期知觉加工（P2）增加有关。相比之下，外化症状与恐惧面孔的早期注意选择（P1）减少以及对中性面孔的知觉加工（P2）增强有关，这可能表明对模糊的社会线索存在敌对的解释偏差。这些结果深入了解了可能导致内化和外化精神病理学的病因和维持的不同认知-情感过程。
