Attention to threat, attentional control and early signs of anxiety in preschool children.

我们不可能处理我们周围世界发生的所有事情。相反，我们会注意特定的事物，比如天空中的云彩或狗叫的声音。有时我们有目的地控制我们关注的东西，而有时事情似乎会“吸引”我们的注意力。通过起到过滤器的作用，注意力在塑造我们对世界的体验方面起着至关重要的作用。即使两个人暴露在完全相同的环境中，他们的主观体验也可能有很大的不同，这取决于他们关注环境的哪些方面。心理学理论表明，那些倾向于关注具有威胁性的事情的人更有可能经历焦虑，在压力时期可能更容易出现情绪问题。已经有一些研究支持这一想法，但这都是基于对成年人或年龄较大的儿童的研究。幼儿时不时地感到恐惧或焦虑是很常见的。然而，一些孩子感到非常焦虑，以至于他们无法做一些他们想做的事情，比如走近一群孩子交朋友或离家过夜。即使是年幼的孩子也会表现出焦虑的早期迹象。这些孩子中的大多数会继续变得自信和快乐，但也有一些孩子会在童年后期出现焦虑问题，以及更长期的社会和情感问题。这项研究的目的之一是看看对威胁的关注或儿童控制注意力的能力是否有助于预测长期的焦虑问题。这项研究将利用令人兴奋的新技术，特别是针对儿童的技术，这些技术允许我们捕捉儿童正在看什么，并在他们看图片的同时记录他们的大脑活动。除了这些简单的电脑游戏，这项研究还包括一些父母和孩子一起完成的任务。这些都是为了帮助我们了解父母是否能够影响他们的孩子关注什么。这对于帮助有患焦虑症风险的儿童来说可能很重要。这项研究之所以重要，主要有两个原因：第一，它可以帮助我们确定哪些儿童可能会经历情绪问题；第二，它可能会帮助我们设计新的计划，用来降低这些儿童持续出现焦虑问题的可能性。这不仅可以提高问题儿童的生活质量，减轻父母的情感负担，还可以降低长期精神健康问题的成本。

It is impossible for us to process all that goes on in the world around us. Instead we pay attention to specific things like the clouds in the sky or the sound of a dog barking. Sometimes we purposefully control what we pay attention to and other times things seem to 'grab' our attention. By acting as a filter, attention plays a fundamental role in shaping our experience of the world. Even if two individuals are exposed to exactly the same environment, their subjective experience can vary considerably, depending on which aspects of the environment they pay attention to. Psychological theory suggests that individuals who have a tendency to pay attention to things that are threatening are more likely to experience anxiety and might be more vulnerable to emotional problems during times of stress. There is already some research supporting this idea but it is all based on work with adults or older children. It is very common for young children to feel fearful or anxious from time to time. However, some children feel so anxious that they cannot do some of the things they would like to do such as approaching a group of children to make friends or staying away from home overnight. Even young children can show early signs of anxiety. Most of these children will go on to become confident and happy, but some go on to have problems with anxiety in later childhood and more long-term social and emotional problems. One of the aims of this research is to see whether attention towards threat, or children's ability to control their attention, helps predict longer-term problems with anxiety. The research will make use of exciting new technologies, adapted especially for children, which allow us to capture what children are looking at and record their brain activity whilst they look at pictures. As well as these simple computer-based games, the research also includes some tasks that parents and children complete together. These are to help us to understand whether parents are able to affect what their child pays attention to. This could be important for helping children who are at risk of developing anxiety problems. This research is important for two main reasons: first, because it may help us to identify children who are likely to experience emotional problems; secondly, it may help us to design new programmes that we can use to decrease the chances of these children having ongoing problems with anxiety. This would not only improve the quality of life of the children in question and reduce the emotional burden on their parents, but it would decrease the cost of long-term mental health problems.