Mobile Eye-Tracking as a Tool for Studying Socioemotional Development: Threat-related Attention in a Social Context

项目摘要 成人和儿童临床文献表明，临床焦虑或高水平焦虑的个体 特质焦虑对威胁存在注意偏向。此外，研究人员可以加剧或改善 焦虑的思想和行为通过实验操纵注意力偏差在实验室。这导致 研究人员认为，对威胁的注意力偏见可能会导致焦虑。这些研究是一个重要的， 对注意力在焦虑出现中的作用的概念的有用证明。然而，与大多数 文献中，这些研究依赖于基于计算机的任务，呈现个体静态情绪面孔， 话偏见是从行为反应时间（RT）或眼动跟踪的刺激模式推断。 这些数据，虽然信息丰富，具有相对较低的生态有效性水平，因为刺激是单一的， 无法支持潜在的交互。此外，这些任务还涉及到 预先选择的刺激，而不是威胁相关的注意力选择。然而，潜在的理论表明， 注意力与社交退缩/焦虑有关，特别是因为社交和威胁方面的问题。 环境是不可预测的，多维的，需要孩子的灵活性。我们所知甚少， 任何东西，关于体内的注意力偏差如何与早期的社会行为有关。 我们需要一种方法，可以更密切地捕捉儿童的经验，他或她的环境 （社会和非社会），以儿童为中心，以儿童为导向。目前的建议解决了这些差距 通过（1）在（2）有焦虑情绪风险的幼儿中测试创新的移动的眼动跟踪系统 因为他们（3）参与久坐和互动注意威胁范式。我们将合并 在实验室气质评估的事件期间连续测量眼睛注视 电池（Lab-TAB）旨在引发对假定的社会和非社会威胁的恐惧行为。一种社会 二分体情节将被用来检查注意过程部署在联合发挥。我们专注于4到6年- 老年儿童-焦虑症发作之前的年龄段，但在此期间，社会退缩是 对于性格恐惧的孩子来说更加明显。因此，我们将研究儿童是否在行为上 抑制（BI），我们最强的气质焦虑预测，不同的威胁相关的注意力在固定 和移动的眼动跟踪任务与非BI对等体。最后，我们将看看久坐或移动的 对威胁数据的关注有助于更好地预测BI与焦虑和社交退缩之间的关联。 这条研究路线反映了研究领域标准对整合多层次的关注 通过检查对潜在威胁的反应（负价系统），注意力模式 （认知系统）和不同社会情绪背景下的早期情感模式（负效价 制度和社会进程）。我们也进入了NIMH目标2的核心，通过表征 行为发展，以确定临床上有用的指标变化的疾病轨迹。

Project Summary The adult and child clinical literature suggests that individuals who are clinically anxious or have high levels of trait anxiety show attention biases to threat. In addition, researchers can exacerbate or ameliorate levels of anxious thought and behavior by experimentally manipulating attention biases in the lab. This has led researchers to argue that attention biases to threat may cause anxiety. These studies are an important and useful proof of concept for the role of attention in the emergence of anxiety. However, as with much of the literature, these studies rely on computer-based tasks that present individuals with static emotion faces and words. Biases are inferred from patterns of behavioral reaction times (RTs) or eye-tracking to the stimuli. These data, while informative, have relatively low levels of ecological validity, as the stimuli are uni- dimensional and unable to support potential interaction. In addition, these tasks tap into orienting to preselected stimuli, rather than threat-related attention selection. However, underlying theory suggests that attention is associated with social withdrawal/anxiety specifically because social and threatening aspects of the environment are unpredictable, multi-dimensional, and require flexibility from the child. Thus, we know little, if anything, regarding how attention bias in vivo may be associated with early social behavior. We need methodologies that can more closely capture the child's experience of his or her environment (social and non-social) and are child-focused and child-directed. The current proposal addresses these gaps by (1) testing an innovative mobile eye-tracking system in (2) young children at temperamental risk for anxiety as they (3) engage in both sedentary and interactive attention to threat paradigms. We will incorporate continuous measurements of eye gaze during episodes from the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB) designed to elicit fearful behavior towards putative social and non-social threats. A social dyad episode will be used to examine attention processes deployed during joint play. We focus on 4 to 6-year- old children – an age period preceding the onset of anxiety disorders, but during which social withdrawal is more apparent for temperamentally fearful children. As such, we will examine if children varying in behavioral inhibition (BI), our strongest temperamental predictor of anxiety, differ in threat-related attention on stationary and mobile eye tracking tasks versus non-BI peers. Finally, we will look to see if either sedentary or mobile attention to threat data helps better predict the association between BI and anxiety and social withdrawal. This line of research reflects the focus in the Research Domain Criteria on integrating multilevel mechanisms by examining response to potential threat (negative valence systems), attention patterns (cognitive systems) and early patterns of affect across varying socioemotional contexts (negative valence systems and social processes). We also go to the heart of NIMH's Objective 2, by characterizing markers of behavioral development in order to identify clinically useful indicators of change across illness trajectories.