| 其他摘要 | Attentional bias has been a popular topic for researchers exploring the causes of anxiety in recent years. Attentional bias refers to the tendency of individuals to pay attention differently to certain types of stimuli, which is usually expressed in two forms, either by paying attention more quickly or by paying more attention. Attentional bias can be found in both stages of attention process: attentional orientation to the stimulus during automatic process and attentional maintenance of the stimulus during strategic process. The phenomenon of attentional bias varies across populations, individuals with anxiety disorder show an attentional bias to threatening stimuli. Moreover, attentional bias is not only as physiiological phenomenon of anxiety disorders, but also plays an important role in maintaining anxiety disorders. Therefore, exploring the attentional bias of individuals not only provides a physiological basis for their anxiety level, but also helps to understand the causes of anxiety and its processing mechanisms, which can help to provide effective interventions.
Previous research has often focused on high trait anxiety in healthy individuals and clinically anxious patients because individuals with high trait anxiety tend to be more prone to anxiety. However, anxiety disorders are related to anxiety states in a continuous time course, and exploring the attentional bias characteristics of people with high anxiety states might provide more information on processing characteristics before they develop anxiety disorders.
Current research remains controversial regarding the components of attentional bias presented by anxious individuals to negative stimuli. Due to the different experimental paradigms and stimulus materials used, the experimental results do not provide a comprehensive summary of the attentional bias. In addition to controlling for other responses unrelated to attention in the experimental paradigm, the experimental stimuli should also be selected according to the characteristics of the materials themselves. For example, emotional faces are common stimulus materials, however, the parts of faces have different functional meanings, attentional responses of individuals to different parts should not be generalized to faces as a whole, and this feature should be taken into account when interpreting attention of individuals to faces. Therefore, it is of theoretical and practical importance to examine the attentional bias mechanisms of anxious individuals to specific stimuli. The present study uses an eye-movement free viewing paradigm to examine the temporal variability of attentional bias and its processing mechanisms in high anxiety level and clinically anxious individuals when they are exposed to both positive and negative emotional faces, and also to explore in depth the temporal and spatial variability and processing mechanisms in clinically anxious individuals when they are exposed to only negative emotional faces.
Study I used a mixed two-factor design of 2 (group: high anxiety group, low anxiety group) X 7 (emotional face types: positive, neutral, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise) to examine the attentional bias processing characteristics of people with high and low anxiety states. Behavioral results revealed that attentional bias to negative stimuli in the high-anxiety state group occurred in the early processing stage, where there was attentional orientation acceleration, and no attentional bias was present in the later processing stage. There was no attentional bias in the low-anxiety state group.
Study II used a mixed two-factor design of 2 (group: clinically anxious, healthy) X 7 (emotional face types: positive, neutral, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise) to examine the attentional bias processing characteristics of clinically anxious and healthy populations. Behavioral results revealed that the clinically anxious group had accelerated attentional orienting to all five negative emotion faces and had difficulty with attentional dissociation during the strategic processing stage, especially for anger and fear emotion faces. The healthy group showed no attentional bias in the automatic processing stage and attentional avoidance in the strategic processing stage for the anger faces. Base on this result, examining the attentional bias components of negative emotional faces in the clinically anxious and healthy groups. Using a mixed two-factor design of 2 (group: clinically anxious, healthy) X6 area of interest: eyes, around eyes, nose, mouth, face, blank). Behavioral results revealed that both the clinically anxious and healthy groups exhibited attentional avoidance during the attentional automatic processing phase. During the strategic processing stage, the clinically anxious group had difficulty with attentional release for negative emotional faces, especially aversive emotions.
The results of these three studies were combined to conclude that the attentional bias of the high anxiety level group was unique, and its performance was different from that of the low anxiety level and clinical anxiety groups. The population of high anxiety level showed accelerated attentional orienting in the early stages of attentional processing and no attentional bias in the late stages of attentional processing. Although there were no statistically significant differences at the level of strategic processing for the population of high anxiety level, the pattern of attentional resource allocation revealed that the processing patterns of the population of high anxiety level were more similar to those of the clinical anxiety population. The attentional bias of the clinically anxious population was accelerated in the early stages of attentional processing under the condition of simultaneous presentation of positive and negative stimuli, and attentional disengagement difficulties were present in the late stages; in the condition of presentation of only negative stimuli, attentional avoidance was present in the early stages of attentional processing, and attentional disengagement difficulties were still present in the late stages. |
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