Anxiety sensitivity, conscious awareness and selective attentional biases in children

C Hunt, E Keogh, C C French

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

33 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

The current study investigated whether physical anxiety sensitivity (AS) is associated with selective attentional biases to affective stimuli in children. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine the deployment of attention towards words pertaining to anxiety symptomatology, socially threatening words, and positive words, in samples of 8-10-year-old children. Word pairs were presented under both masked and unmasked conditions. Irrespective of masking, children high in physical AS displayed an attentional vigilance for emotional words relative to neutral words, whereas those low in physical AS displayed a relative avoidance of such material. The results of this study are interesting as they not only suggest the presence of automatic AS-related biases in childhood, but that this is a general emotionality bias rather than one related to specific anxiety-related stimuli. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)497-509
Number of pages13
JournalBehaviour Research and Therapy
Volume45
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2007

Bibliographical note

ID number: ISI:000244384900008

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