Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, US.
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, US.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2021 Jun;49(6):711-726. doi: 10.1007/s10802-020-00751-3. Epub 2021 Feb 3.
Attention biases to emotion are associated with symptoms of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in children and adolescents. It is unknown whether attention biases to emotion and their associations with different symptoms of psychopathology vary across development from early childhood through young adulthood. We examine this age-related variation in the current study. Participants (N = 190; ages: 4-25) completed survey-based psychopathology symptom measures and a dot-probe task to assess attention bias to happy, sad, and angry relative to neutral faces. We tested whether linear or non-linear (e.g., spline-based models) associations best characterized age-related variation in attention to emotion. We additionally examined whether attention biases were associated with depression, anxiety, and externalizing symptoms and whether these associations varied by age. No age-related differences in attention biases were found for any of the emotional faces. Attention biases were associated with psychopathology symptoms, but only when examining moderation by age. Biased attention to angry faces was associated with greater symptoms of anxiety and depression in adolescents and young adults, but not children. Similarly, biased attention to happy faces was associated with externalizing symptoms in adolescents and young adults, but not in children. In contrast, biased attention to happy faces was associated with greater anxiety symptoms in children, but not in adolescents or young adults. Biased attention toward social threat and reward becomes more strongly coupled with internalizing and externalizing symptoms, respectively, during the transition to adolescence. These findings could inform when interventions such as attention bias modification training may be most effective.
注意偏向与儿童和青少年的内化和外化精神病理学症状有关。目前还不清楚，从儿童早期到青年期，注意偏向情绪及其与不同精神病理学症状的关联是否会随着发育而变化。我们在本研究中检查了这种与年龄相关的变化。参与者（N=190；年龄：4-25 岁）完成了基于问卷调查的精神病理学症状测量和点探测任务，以评估相对于中性面孔对快乐、悲伤和愤怒的注意偏向。我们测试了线性或非线性（例如，基于样条的模型）关联是否最能描述注意情绪随年龄的变化。我们还检查了注意偏向是否与抑郁、焦虑和外化症状有关，以及这些关联是否因年龄而异。对于任何情绪面孔，都没有发现注意偏向与年龄相关的差异。注意偏向与精神病理学症状有关，但仅在考虑年龄调节时才如此。对愤怒面孔的注意偏向与青少年和年轻人的焦虑和抑郁症状更为相关，而与儿童无关。同样，对快乐面孔的注意偏向与青少年和年轻人的外化症状有关，而与儿童无关。相比之下，对快乐面孔的注意偏向与儿童的焦虑症状更为相关，而与青少年或年轻人无关。对社会威胁和奖励的注意偏向与内化和外化症状的关联分别变得更加强烈，这一发现可以为注意力偏向修正训练等干预措施何时最有效提供信息。
