Attention and emotion processing among individuals with worry

Abstract

Worry has been defined as a core feature of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and is characterized by excessive and uncontrollable thoughts regarding future uncertain or potentially threatening events. Models of worry have identified attentional biases as a primary maintaining factor, specifically a tendency for individuals with worry to attend to threat-related or uncertain stimuli more than non-anxious individuals. The Attentional Control Theory suggests that these biases result in reduced performance efficiency (i.e., reaction times), but not performance effectiveness (i.e., accuracy). Additionally, individuals with worry report more negative interpretations of uncertain or ambiguous stimuli, such as surprised faces, as measured by valence and arousal ratings. The current study sought to examine the impact of worry on performance efficiency and subjective ratings of valence and arousal of threatening and surprised facial stimuli using a modified Flankers Task and Self-Mannequin Task. It was hypothesized that individuals high in worry would display increased (longer) reaction times on the Flankers Task when presented with fearful and surprised facial stimuli. Furthermore, we expected that individuals high in worry would rate fearful and surprised facial stimuli as more negative and arousing than individuals with low to no worry. Results did not provide support for differences between groups; however, this study was limited by a number of potential confounds.