Anxiety Increases Breakthrough of Threat Stimuli in Continuous Flash Suppression
Anxiety Increases Breakthrough of Threat Stimuli in Continuous Flash Suppression
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DOI：
10.1037/a0037801
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发表时间：
2014-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
Murphy, Susannah E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Capitao, Liliana P.;Underdown, Stacey J. V.;Murphy, Susannah E.
特质焦虑与对危险相关刺激的过度处理有关，使个体容易快速发现威胁线索。早期的自动机制被认为是造成这些认知偏差的原因。然而，最常用于实现视觉抑制或注意力不自觉的范式的局限性，使得影响信息处理早期阶段的战略机制的可能性成为可能。确定焦虑症状是否与处理过程中真正的自动偏差相关，是确定其病因和制定有针对性的认知干预措施的重要一步。我们使用连续闪光抑制（CFS）解决了这个问题，这是一种新颖而强大的视觉抑制方法，能够使刺激在较长时间内不被意识察觉。我们专门调查了特质焦虑对抑制威胁性、积极性和中性面孔的影响程度。招募了 49 名没有心理问题史和不同程度焦虑的人。与快乐的面孔相比，较高的特质焦虑分数与检测恐惧的速度更快相关。这些结果表明，对与焦虑症状相关的威胁性信息的偏见至少部分地发生在信息处理的早期阶段。这表明针对焦虑的认知干预可能受益于直接针对此类早期和潜在的前意识过程。
Trait anxiety is associated with an excessive processing of danger-related stimuli, predisposing individuals to quickly detect threatening cues. Early, automatic mechanisms are believed to be responsible for the production of these cognitive biases; however, limitations in the paradigms most commonly used to achieve visual suppression or attentional unawareness have left open the possibility of strategic mechanisms influencing these early stages of information processing. Establishing whether symptoms of anxiety are associated with truly automatic biases in processing is an essential step in determining their etiology and in developing targeted cognitive interventions. We addressed this question using continuous flash suppression (CFS), a novel and robust method of visual suppression capable of rendering a stimulus invisible from awareness for extended durations. We specifically investigated the degree to which trait anxiety influenced the suppression of threatening, positive, and neutral faces. Forty-nine individuals, with no reported history of psychological problems and varying levels of anxiety, were recruited. Higher trait anxiety scores were associated with an increased speed to detect fearful compared with happy faces. These results indicate that the bias toward threatening information associated with symptoms of anxiety operates, at least partly, at an early stage of information processing. This suggests that cognitive interventions for anxiety may benefit from directly targeting such early and potentially preconscious processes.