Attentional biases toward internal and external threat in anxiety: Insights from the stimulus-preceding negativity

Abstract

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is characterized by excessive and uncontrollable worry. Individuals who experience high levels of worry have unconscious attentional biases toward threatening stimuli and display a higher amount of anticipatory processing immediately prior to the onset of threat cues. The current study examined eventrelated brain potentials, particularly the stimulus-preceding negativity, to evaluate if attention to an internal source of threat, such as elevated heart rate, can act as a distraction from a subsequent external source of threat. Participants were placed into high and low worry groups and engaged in an S1/S2 task, in which 25% of S1 stimuli were designed to draw attention toward an internal threat (elevated heart rate), before exposure to either an emotional or neutral S2. Results found that those who viewed the S1 distractor heart rate cue showed less anticipatory processing for the following S2, as indexed by a less negative amplitude of the stimulus-preceding negativity. A moderately significant relationship was also found between group and cue, indicating that these results may be applicable to other populations, such as individuals with social anxiety. These findings are in line with the existing literature regarding attentional biases and anticipatory processing in anxiety disorders. Implications and limitations of the present results, as well as suggestions for future studies are discussed.