Converging Multi-modal Evidence for Implicit Threat-Related Bias in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders
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Converging Multi‑modal Evidence for Implicit Threat‑Related Bias in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Rany Abend1 · Mira A. Bajaj1 · Chika Matsumoto1 · Marissa Yetter1 · Anita Harrewijn1 · Elise M. Cardinale1 · Katharina Kircanski1 · Eli R. Lebowitz2 · Wendy K. Silverman2 · Yair Bar‑Haim3 · Amit Lazarov3 · Ellen Leibenluft1 · Melissa Brotman1 · Daniel S. Pine1 Accepted: 23 September 2020 © This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2020
Abstract This report examines the relationship between pediatric anxiety disorders and implicit bias evoked by threats. To do so, the report uses two tasks that assess implicit bias to negative-valence faces, the first by eye-gaze and the second by measuring body-movement parameters. The report contrasts task performance in 51 treatment-seeking, medication-free pediatric patients with anxiety disorders and 36 healthy peers. Among these youth, 53 completed an eye-gaze task, 74 completed a body-movement task, and 40 completed both tasks. On the eye-gaze task, patients displayed longer gaze duration on negative relative to non-negative valence faces than healthy peers, F(1, 174) = 8.27, p = .005. In contrast, on the body-movement task, patients displayed a greater tendency to behaviorally avoid negative-valence faces than healthy peers, F(1, 72) = 4.68, p = .033. Finally, implicit bias measures on the two tasks were correlated, r(38) = .31, p = .049. In sum, we found an association between pediatric anxiety disorders and implicit threat bias on two tasks, one measuring eye-gaze and the other measuring whole-body movements. Converging evidence for implicit threat bias encourages future research using multiple tasks in anxiety. Keywords Anxiety · Threat · Bias · Attention · Avoidance
Introduction Considerable research examines implicit threat biases in pediatric anxiety disorders (Eysenck et al. 2007; Mitte 2008; Mogg and Bradley 1998; Roefs et al. 2011). Attempts to extend this work face challenges that might be met by Rany Abend and Mira A. Bajaj contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00712-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Rany Abend [email protected] 1
Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bldg 15K, MSC‑2670, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
2
Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
3
School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
integrating multiple implicit threat bias tasks. The current report initiates such work by using two tasks in research on pediatric anxiety. Threat bias studies relate to work on brain function, cognition, and emotion. The brain possesses insufficient resources to simultaneously represent all features of the environment, and cognitive functions prioritize features to compensate for this capacity limitation (Beck and Clark 1997). Th
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