Attention training and the threat bias: An ERP study

• Published in: Brain and cognition 2012-02, Vol.78 (1), p.63-73
• Main Authors: O’Toole, Laura, Dennis, Tracy A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Adults; Affectivity. Emotion; Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Attention; Attention - physiology; Attention training; Attribution Theory; Behavior Problems; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Hemisphere Functions; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Cognitive Processes; Cues; Diagnostic Tests; Dot probe; Electroencephalography; ERP; Evoked Potentials - physiology; Facial Expression; Fear; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Male; Measures (Individuals); Personality. Affectivity; Photic Stimulation; Physiology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time - physiology; Role; Surveys and Questionnaires; Task Analysis; Training
• ISSN: 0278-2626; 1090-2147
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2011.10.007

► Behavioral effects of attention training depend on pre-training biases. ► Early spatial attention to emotional stimuli is affected by attention training. ► Physiological changes in attention are associated with behavior after training. Anxiety is characterized by exaggerated attention to threat. Several studies suggest that this threat bias plays a causal role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Furthermore, although the threat bias can be reduced in anxious individuals and induced in non-anxious individual, the attentional mechanisms underlying these changes remain unclear. To address this issue, 49 non-anxious adults were randomly assigned to either attentional training toward or training away from threat using a modified version of the dot probe task. Behavioral measures of attentional biases were also generated pre- and post-training using the dot probe task. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were generated to threat and non-threat face pairs and probes during pre- and post-training assessments. Effects of training on behavioral measures of the threat bias were significant, but only for those participants showing pre-training biases. Attention training also influenced early spatial attention, as measured by post-training P1 amplitudes to cues. Results illustrate the importance of taking pre-training attention biases in non-anxious individuals into account when evaluating the effects of attention training and tracking physiological changes in attention following training.