Training-associated changes and stability of attention bias in youth: Implications for Attention Bias Modification Treatment for pediatric anxiety

Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT), an emerging treatment for anxiety disorders, is thought to modify underlying, stable patterns of attention. Therefore, ABMT research should take into account the impact of attention bias stability on attention training response, especially in pediatric p...

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Published inDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience Vol. 4; pp. 52 - 64
Main Authors Britton, Jennifer C, Bar-Haim, Yair, Clementi, Michelle A, Sankin, Lindsey S, Chen, Gang, Shechner, Tomer, Norcross, Maxine A, Spiro, Carolyn N, Lindstrom, Kara M, Pine, Daniel S
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Netherlands Elsevier 01.04.2013
Subjects
Adolescent
Amygdala - physiology
Anxiety Disorders - therapy
Attention - physiology
Child
Cognitive Therapy - methods
Facial Expression
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Neuropsychological Tests
Original Research
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Self Report
Treatment Outcome
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Summary:Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT), an emerging treatment for anxiety disorders, is thought to modify underlying, stable patterns of attention. Therefore, ABMT research should take into account the impact of attention bias stability on attention training response, especially in pediatric populations. ABMT research typically relies on the dot-probe task, where individuals detect a probe following an emotional-neutral stimulus pair. The current research presents two dot-probe experiments relevant to ABMT and attention-bias stability. In Experiment 1, anxious youth receiving 8-weeks of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) were randomly assigned to ABMT that trains attention towards happy faces (n=18) or placebo (n=18). Two additional comparison groups, anxious youth receiving only CBT (n=17) and healthy comparison youth (n=16), were studied. Active attention training towards happy faces did not augment clinician-rated response to CBT; however, individuals receiving training exhibited reductions on self-report measures of anxiety earlier than individuals receiving CBT only. In Experiment 2, healthy youth (n=12) completed a dot-probe task twice while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Intra-class correlation demonstrated stability of neural activation in response to attention bias in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Together, these two studies investigate the ways in which attention-bias stability may impact future work on ABMT.
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Present address: Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
Present address: Department of Psychology, University of Miami, FL, USA.
Present address: School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Present address: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA.
Present address: Booz, Allen, Hamilton, McLean, VA, USA.
ISSN:1878-9293
1878-9307
DOI:10.1016/j.dcn.2012.11.001