Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study.
Research suggests that anxiety is maintained by an attentional bias to threat, and a growing base of evidence suggests that anxiety may additionally be associated with the deficient attentional processing of positive stimuli. The present study sought to examine whether such anxiety-linked attentiona...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/21993 |
| _version_ | 1848750746495877120 |
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| author | Chen, N. Clarke, Patrick Watson, T. MacLeod, C. Guastella, A. |
| author_facet | Chen, N. Clarke, Patrick Watson, T. MacLeod, C. Guastella, A. |
| author_sort | Chen, N. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Research suggests that anxiety is maintained by an attentional bias to threat, and a growing base of evidence suggests that anxiety may additionally be associated with the deficient attentional processing of positive stimuli. The present study sought to examine whether such anxiety-linked attentional biases were associated with either stimulus driven or attentional control mechanisms of attentional selectivity. High and low trait anxious participants completed an emotional variant of an antisaccade task, in which they were required to prosaccade towards, or antisaccade away from a positive, neutral or threat stimulus, while eye movements were recorded. While low anxious participants were found to be slower to saccade in response to positive stimuli, irrespectively of whether a pro- or antisaccade was required, such a bias was absent in high anxious individuals. Analysis of erroneous antisaccades further revealed at trend level, that anxiety was associated with reduced peak velocity in response to threat. The findings suggest that anxiety is associated with the aberrant processing of positive stimuli, and greater compensatory efforts in the inhibition of threat. The findings further highlight the relevance of considering saccade peak velocity in the assessment of anxiety-linked attentional processing. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:41:44Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-21993 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:41:44Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-219932017-09-13T13:54:25Z Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study. Chen, N. Clarke, Patrick Watson, T. MacLeod, C. Guastella, A. Research suggests that anxiety is maintained by an attentional bias to threat, and a growing base of evidence suggests that anxiety may additionally be associated with the deficient attentional processing of positive stimuli. The present study sought to examine whether such anxiety-linked attentional biases were associated with either stimulus driven or attentional control mechanisms of attentional selectivity. High and low trait anxious participants completed an emotional variant of an antisaccade task, in which they were required to prosaccade towards, or antisaccade away from a positive, neutral or threat stimulus, while eye movements were recorded. While low anxious participants were found to be slower to saccade in response to positive stimuli, irrespectively of whether a pro- or antisaccade was required, such a bias was absent in high anxious individuals. Analysis of erroneous antisaccades further revealed at trend level, that anxiety was associated with reduced peak velocity in response to threat. The findings suggest that anxiety is associated with the aberrant processing of positive stimuli, and greater compensatory efforts in the inhibition of threat. The findings further highlight the relevance of considering saccade peak velocity in the assessment of anxiety-linked attentional processing. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/21993 10.1371/journal.pone.0086474 Public Library of Science fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Chen, N. Clarke, Patrick Watson, T. MacLeod, C. Guastella, A. Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study. |
| title | Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study. |
| title_full | Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study. |
| title_fullStr | Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study. |
| title_short | Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study. |
| title_sort | biased saccadic responses to emotional stimuli in anxiety: an antisaccade study. |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/21993 |