The time course of attentional bias in anxiety

Sass, Sarah

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/17039 Copy

Description

Title

The time course of attentional bias in anxiety

Author(s)

Sass, Sarah

Issue Date

2010-08-31T20:30:17Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Miller, Gregory A.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Heller, Wendy

Committee Member(s)

• Miller, Gregory A.
• Fabiani, Monica
• Federmeier, Kara D.
• Verona, Edelyn

Department of Study

Psychology

Discipline

Psychology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Anxiety
• Emotion
• Attentional bias
• Event-Related Potentials

Abstract

Attentional bias to emotional stimuli (especially unpleasantly valenced or threatening) is a common finding in anxiety and less commonly found in depression. So-called neutral or “nonemotional” stimuli varying in attentional processing demands have not been systematically investigated or contrasted with emotional stimuli. In order to clarify the specificity of early sensory attentional prioritization of emotionally arousing stimuli in anxiety, the present project collected event-related potentials (ERPs) during the emotion- and color-word Stroop tasks in both anxious and depressed participants. Present data show that emotional information is not always preferentially processed in anxiety and depression and that preferential processing may depend on the processing demands of neutral stimuli. Systematic examination of the role of emotional valence, emotional arousal, and neutral and emotional stimulus processing demands is crucial to understanding so-called “preferential” attention for emotional stimuli in anxiety, depression, and comorbidity. Such work can yield insights into cognition-emotion interactions in psychopathology that may improve understanding of the etiology and treatment of these disorders.

Graduation Semester

2010-08

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/17039

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2010 Sarah Sass. Portions of the dissertation include information published (and copyrighted by) John Wiley and Sons in the Journal Psychophysiology. The article citation is: Sass, S.M., Heller, W., Stewart, J. L., Silton, R. L., Edgar, J. C., Fisher, J. E., & Miller, G.A. (2010). Time course of attentional bias in anxiety: Emotion and gender specificity. Psychophysiology, 47, 247-259. I was given permission to reproduce any portion of this article in the present dissertation under licence # 2395630482426.

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