TY - JOUR
T1 - Anxiety sensitivity, conscious awareness and selective attentional biases in children
AU - Hunt, C
AU - Keogh, E
AU - French, C C
N1 - ID number: ISI:000244384900008
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
U2 - 10.1016/j.brat.2006.04.001
DO - 10.1016/j.brat.2006.04.001
M3 - Article
SN - 0005-7967
VL - 45
SP - 497
EP - 509
JO - Behaviour Research and Therapy
JF - Behaviour Research and Therapy
IS - 3
ER -