Abstract
Background: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in children and adolescents, and are associated with aberrant emotion-related attention orienting and inhibitory control. While recent studies conducted with high-trait anxious adults have employed novel emotion-modified antisaccade tasks to examine the influence of emotional information on orienting and inhibition, similar studies have yet to be conducted in youths. Methods: Participants were 22 children/adolescents diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and 22 age-matched healthy comparison youths. Participants completed an emotion-modified antisaccade task that was similar to those used in studies of high-trait anxious adults. This task probed the influence of abruptly appearing neutral, happy, angry, or fear stimuli on orienting (prosaccade) or inhibitory (antisaccade) responses. Results: Anxious compared to healthy children showed facilitated orienting toward angry stimuli. With respect to inhibitory processes, threat-related information improved antisaccade accuracy in healthy but not anxious youth. These findings were not linked to individual levels of reported anxiety or specific anxiety disorders. Conclusions: Findings suggest that anxious relative to healthy children manifest enhanced orienting toward threat-related stimuli. In addition, the current findings suggest that threat may modulate inhibitory control during adolescent development.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 856-863 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines |
Volume | 53 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Anxiety
- bias
- children
- development
- emotion
- inhibition
- orienting
- saccade
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Psychiatry and Mental health