2-032 - Challenges and Innovations in the Study of the Anxiety-Related Threat Bias in Childhood

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

A compelling body of research suggests that threat bias, or selective attention to threat, is a causal mechanism in anxiety. Techniques like computerized attention bias modification training (ABMT) leverage the plasticity of the threat bias by systematically retraining attention away from threat to reduce anxiety. Identifying key biopsychsocial processes associated with the threat bias and its plasticity across development has the potential to inform our understanding of mechanisms underlying risk and resilience in anxiety and aid in the development of more effective treatments. This symposium will highlight research on challenges and innovations in the measurement and modification of threat bias across development. First, Buss and Perez-Edgar describe research on threat bias and the development of anxiety from infancy to early childhood. Findings shed light on the role of biases away from threat, the stability of threat bias, and how attention to threat interacts with broad social-emotional patterns in the development of anxiety. Second, Haas and colleagues document normative developmental changes in children’s ability to inhibit emotional capture of attention, the emotional specificity of these effects, and implications for the emergence of threat-related biases. Third, Dennis and colleagues show that neurophysiological measures of threat processing – but not traditional reaction-time threat bias measures - predict how and for whom ABMT is most effective. Finally, Roos and colleagues investigate computerized cognitive interventions in at-risk samples. They report that children who have experienced adversity present atypical associations between attention biases and internalizing symptoms and may be less able to receive benefits from cognitive retraining.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• Tracy A. Dennis, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Discussant

• Tracy A. Dennis, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Individual Presentations

• Conceptual and Methodological Issues in Capturing Attention Bias from Infancy to Late Childhood - Presenting Author: Kristin A Buss, Pennsylvania State University; Koraly Elisa Perez-Edgar, Pennsylvania State University

• Age-Related Changes in Performance on an Emotional Priming Visual Search Task - Presenting Author: Sara Haas, University of Maryland; Dima Amso, Brown University; Nathan A Fox, Univ of Maryland

• You’re Always on My Mind: Biobehavioral Processes Underlying Attention Bias Modification for Anxiety - Presenting Author: Tracy A. Dennis, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY; Laura OToole, City University of New York; Samantha Berthod, City University of New York; Sarah Babkirk, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York

• Internalizing Symptoms and Cognitive Skill Interventions for At-Risk Children; Relationships based on Foster Care and SES - Presenting Author: Leslie E. Roos, University of Oregon; Richard Lee Bryck, Oregon Social Learning Center; Sonya Violet Troller-Renfree, University of Maryland, College Park; Philip Andrew Fisher, University of Oregon