Mechanisms of Attentional Biases towards Threat in the Anxiety Disorders: An Integrative Review

By Josh M. Cisler, Ernst H. W. Koster. Clinical Psychology Review, 2009

1,719 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A wealth of research demonstrates attentional biases toward threat in the anxiety disorders. Several models have been advanced to explain these biases in anxiety, yet the mechanisms comprising and mediating the biases remain unclear. In the present article, we review evidence regarding the mechanisms of attentional biases through careful examination of the components of attentional bias, the mechanisms underlying these components, and the stage of information processing during which the biases occur. Facilitated attention, difficulty in disengagement, and attentional avoidance comprise the components of attentional bias. A threat detection mechanism likely underlies facilitated attention, a process that may be neurally centered around the amygdala. Attentional control ability likely underlies difficulty in disengagement, emotion regulation goals likely underly attentional avoidance, and both of these processes may be neurally centered around prefrontal cortex functioning. The threat detection mechanism may be a mostly automatic process, attentional avoidance may be a mostly strategic process, and difficulty in disengagement may be a mixture of automatic and strategic processing. Recommendations for future research are discussed.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1a19a41224be8f588396e49596cbe224c740c905

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. A. Mathews
2. Ernst H. W. Koster
3. B. Olatunji
4. Thomas Armstrong
5. C. MacLeod
6. E. Fox
7. S. Parsons
8. A. Kruijt

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Ernst H. W. Koster
2. C. MacLeod
3. S. Parsons
4. E. Fox
5. A. Kruijt
6. A. Mathews
7. Amit Bernstein
8. Ariel Zvielli

Citations in the corpus

• A Cognitive Model of Psychological Resilience (2016, background): “Similar notions are apparent in the literature on emotion dysfunction, which has also examined fundamental information processing biases that are largely deemed to be automatic (for reviews see, Cisler & Koster, 2010; Gotlib & Joormann, 2010; Mathews & MacLeod, 2005).”
• Loneliness Across the Life Span (2015, background): “The initial vigilance pattern of processing is thought to be automatic, unintentional, and outside voluntary control, whereas the later stages of attention are thought to be strategic, intentional, and under voluntary control (Cisler & Koster, 2010).”
• The effect of cognitive load in emotional attention and trait anxiety: An eye movement study (2012, background): “…characteristics, such as stimulus saliency, versus top-down mechanisms such as goal-directed behaviour and working memory processes in identifying taskrelevant and task-irrelevant information (Cisler & Koster, 2010; Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007; Mathews, Mackintosh, & Fulcher, 1997).”
• “Proximising” climate change reconsidered: A construal level theory perspective (2016, background): “To illustrate, people who are generally fearful (i.e., for whom fear is a trait) pay more attention to negative information (Cisler & Koster, 2010), rely more strongly on fear to make judgments and decisions (Gasper & Clore, 1998), and also tend to avoid risks (Maner et al., 2007).”
• Loneliness and attention to social threat in young adults: Findings from an eye tracker study (2014, background): “The latter attention process is thought to occur on a later timescale during extended viewing as it is under voluntary control (Cisler & Koster, 2010).”
• Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Bias (2015, background): “…development and maintenance of multiple forms of psychopathology and addiction (Bar-Haim, Lamy, Pergamin, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007; Cisler & Koster, 2010; Luijten et al., 2012; Mathews & MacLeod, 2005; Osinsky, Lösch, Hennig, Alexander, & MacLeod, 2012; Shechner et al., 2012).”
• Measuring Attentional Bias to Threat: Reliability of Dot Probe and Eye Movement Indices (2014, background): “Attentional biases to threatening stimuli are thought to play a key role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders (e.g., Cisler and Koster 2010; Mogg and Bradley 1998), including social anxiety disorder (e.g., Rapee and Heimberg 1997; see Schultz and Heimberg 2008 for a review).”
• Psychological Science Needs a Standard Practice of Reporting the Reliability of Cognitive-Behavioral Measurements (2019, methodology): “To build on the previous sections, we discuss an example from experimental psychopathology relating to selective attentional processing of emotional information (for reviews of this field, see, e.g., Cisler & Koster, 2010; Gotlib & Joormann, 2010; Yiend, 2010).”
• Cognitive bias modification approaches to anxiety. (2012, background): “Such assessment techniques have repeatedly demonstrated attentional bias to negative stimuli in both clinical and nonclinical manifestations of dysfunctional anxiety (cf. Cisler & Koster 2010).”
• Eye tracking of attention in the affective disorders: a meta-analytic review and synthesis. (2012, methodology): “In addition, the references of eye tracking studies revealed by these methods were consulted, as were the references of review papers on attentional bias in anxiety or depressive disorders (Bar-Haim et al., 2007; Cisler & Koster, 2010; Mogg & Bradley, 2005; Weierich et al., 2008).”