Emotion-Primed Visual Search: Alternatives to the Dot Probe

• In Event: Beyond the Dot Probe: Innovations in Measuring Affect-Biased Attention Across Development

Abstract

Attention regulation and social perception are critical building blocks of cognition, and proficiency in each skill is associated with better life outcomes such as: learning (Markant et al., 2016), executive functioning (Marciszko et al., 2020; Veer, 2017), prosociality (Juvrud et al., 2019), theory of mind (Aschersleben et al., 2008), and quality of social interactions (Paulus et al., 2015; Perez-Edgar et al., 2010). Thus, both skills have been widely studied across infant and child development, in psychiatric populations, as well as in various socio-emotional and socio-economic contexts. One of the most common experimental methods of concurrently studying these two skills has been the dot-probe. Studies using the dot-probe paradigm have noted the presence of an attention bias to threatening emotional faces in individuals with both clinical and high levels of anxiety (Bar-Haim et al., 2007) and that patterns of stressful circumstances alter anxious individuals’ pattern of attention to threat (Bar-Haim et al., 2010). However, the dot-probe task does not assess how social stimuli effect attentional efficiency; that is, processing as a function of attentional demands (e.g. complexity of visual stimuli). Thus, developmental dot-probe studies have been limited in the ability to address how psychiatric status, socio-emotional and socio-economic contexts impact the efficiency of attention and social perception.
An alternative to the dot-probe to address these tasks limitations is to examine the impact of social stimuli on the efficiency of attentional processing during visual searches (Haas, Amso, & Fox 2016). In this talk I will highlight the versatility of the emotion priming influences on visual search task (EPIVS) developed by Haas, Amso, and Fox (2016), and present findings from five recent EPIVS studies. First, I will discuss two developmental EPIVS studies, one of pediatric anxiety utilizing eye tracking and fMRI (Study 1: Smith et al, in press) and the other electrophysiological measures in a subclinical adolescent sample (Study 2: Haas, Buzzell, & Fox, in prep). Second, I will discuss two studies utilizing an infant analogue of EPIVS task to assess the effects of maternal mental health on infant attention and social perception in a western sample of 9-month old infants (Study 3: Juvrud, Haas, Fox, Gredeback, revised & resubmitted) and non-western context sample of 9-month old infants from Thimpu, Bhutan (Study 4: Haas et al., under review). In both studies, we found that maternal mental health impacts early infant visual attention, as well demonstrated the feasibility of this task in mobile eye-tracking in infants cross-culturally. Lastly, I will present new results from a field experiment application of the EPIVS study, examining the effects of trauma, displacement and PTSD on attention and social perception in 100 Syrian refugee families (Study 5: Haas, Lindskog, Hall, Pollak & Gredeback, in prep). In sum, these five studies highlight the importance of social perception and visual attention across development, as well as the cross-cultural versatility of the EPIVS task in the study of cognitive development, psychiatry, and socio-emotional environmental influences.

Author

• Sara Haas, University of Maryland, College Park
  Presenting Author