Problem 2: Attentional bias Flashcards
emotional stroop task + limitation
- to what extent does connotation of the word affect reaction time –> highly anxious people take longer to name the color of threatening words because of impaired inhibition (more focus on the meaning of the word than the colour)
limitation: results may have been influenced by other non-attentional processing (avoidance or behavioural interference)
dot probe task
-you see a dot on the screen –> replaced by word –> replaced by probe –> person has to identify where the dot was
-for anxious people: response time is faster for threatening words
-measures selective attention
visual search task
-participants have to find a target stimulus in a matrix of distracting stimuli
-for highly anxious people: response time is fast for finding a threatening stimulus compared to a neutral stimulus
-measuring mainly selective attention
spatial cueing task
participants look at a fixation point between 2 rectangles and a presented with a cue (could be emotional words or picture) and respond as fast as possible
eye tracking
eyes are tracked while looking at picture of spider or flower –> anxious people look at threat first but then turn away
-measures spatial attention
biased attentional direction account
-input is appraised as threatening or non-threatening through affective decision mechanism that allocates attentional resources
-high anxiety people attend to the threat more and qualify stimuli as more threatening
cognitive motivation model
-anxious people have a valence evaluation system that assesses a stimulus on how threatening it is –> they have a lower threshold for assessing something as threatening
self-regulatory executive function model
-emphasis on top-down processing (cognition –> body)
-trait anxiety is linked to negative beliefs and problems at the level of the executive control
attentional control theory
-stimulus driven-bottom op processing (behaviour –> cognition)
-goal-driven top-down processing (cognition –> behaviour)
-high anxious people: stimulus driven processing when threat is present –> hinders top-down processing related to executive control
what are outcome measures for fear responses
verbal: reports
physiological: SCR and startle reflex, heart rate, pupil dilation
behavioural: measuring avoidance
–> usually multiple methods are used, but no correlations between methods
three major lines of criticism on pavlovian theory
-people are often not able to report a specific fearful experience that explains the onset of their anxiety
-not all people who had a traumatic experience develop an anxiety disorder
-learning through the pavlovian model is too simple, there are other ways
arguments for the criticism: anxious people don’t always remember a traumatic experience / ur cs pairing
-generalisation
-higher order conditioning (niet een directe conditionering)
-they can just not remember
-modelling
-subtle experience
-observatino and fear learning
arguments for the criticism: not everyone that had a traumatic experience develops an anxiety disorder
-individual differences: personality, genetic factors (intolerance of uncertainty, temperamental factors)
-contextual factors: experiences before, during or after the event
-inflation: experiences after the event inflate the whole experience
arguments for the criticism: the model is too simple, there are other methods
-context conditioning (uncertainty of the stimulus being presented or not will cause additional anxiety)
-differential inhibition procedure (anxious people struggle more to differentiate between threatening and a non-threatening stimulus)
-stimulus generalisation (either conceptual or perceptual)
-predictive validity (new card)
the predictive validity for the third criticism
-fear extinction: fear goes away, however irl often it returns
-spontaneous recovery (just randomly comes back)
-renewal (change in context leads to return of fear)
-reinstatement (recurrence of fear after re-representation of the stimulus
