Emerging relations between attention and negative affect in the first two years of life

项目摘要 成人和儿童的临床文献表明，临床焦虑或有高水平的人 特质焦虑表现出对威胁的注意偏向。此外，当这些注意力偏向是实验性的 在实验室中操纵，研究人员可以加剧或改善焦虑的思想和行为水平。这 导致研究人员争辩说，对威胁的注意力偏差可能会导致焦虑。然而，在多大程度上 与威胁相关的注意偏向代表持续焦虑或早期出现的下游结果 导致焦虑症风险的易感因素仍不清楚。这些研究 突出注意操控的有效性从机械论的角度看待注意操控 注意力和情感是概念的重要证明。然而，他们无法解释这些 信息加工偏向实际上是在童年时期形成的。影响有偏见的注意， 倾向于优先注意情感刺激的倾向，可能会“调整”最初的注意过滤器，以寻找和 识别威胁，偏向后续信息处理和行为执行，并充当 情绪调节的基本形式。焦虑的成年人和儿童很早就表现出对威胁的注意偏差 气质与更高的负面情绪和焦虑水平以及标准的 对威胁的优先关注早在生命的第一年就很明显了。然而，我们对此知之甚少 这些相互关系是如何随着时间的推移而出现和变化的，因为许多影响注意力的文献(1) 侧重于成人临床定义的人群，(2)没有系统地评估这两种结构 多个任务和背景，以及(3)很少采取发展的观点，将核心机制视为 它们出现在婴儿期，并区分标准模式和与特定风险相关的模式 各种因素。目前的纵向研究将采用三个眼球跟踪任务，以捕获 从4个月到24个月的五个时间点评估婴儿的注意力。此外，我们还将实施 对气质负面情绪的丰富评估，这与后来出现的焦虑和 社交退缩。最后，我们将评估探测神经(EEG)的已知生物-心理-社会风险标记物，以及 副交感神经(RSA)机制。我们还将研究以家长为中心的调节机制 社会情感发展。这条研究路线反映了研究领域标准中的重点是 通过审查对潜在威胁的反应(负价系统)来整合多层次机制； 注意模式(认知系统)和跨不同社会情绪环境的早期情感模式 (负价系统和社会过程)。我们还将深入到NIMH目标2的核心，即 表征神经和行为发育的轨迹，以确定临床有用的指标 在疾病轨迹上的变化。

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, when these attention biases are experimentally manipulated in the lab, researchers can exacerbate or ameliorate levels of anxious thought and behavior. This has led researchers to argue that attention biases to threat may cause anxiety. However, the degree to which threat-related attention bias represents a down-stream result of ongoing anxiety or an early-emerging predisposing factor implicated in the risk for the development of anxiety disorders remains unclear. The studies highlighting the effectiveness of attention manipulation take a mechanistic view of the relation between attention and affect and are important proof of concept. However, they cannot elucidate how these information-processing biases actually develop over the course of childhood. Affect biased attention, the predisposition to preferentially attend to affective stimuli, may “tune” initial attentional filters to seek out and identify threat, biasing subsequent information processing and behavioral enactment and serving as a foundational form of emotion regulation. Anxious adults and children show attention biases to threat, early temperament is associated with elevated levels of negative affect and anxiety, and normative patterns of preferential attention to threat are evident as early as the first year of life. However, we know little concerning how these inter-relations appear and change over time since much of the attention-affect literature (1) has focused on adult clinically-defined populations, (2) does not systematically assess both constructs across multiple tasks and contexts, and (3) rarely takes a developmental view that examines core mechanisms as they emerge in infancy and differentiate between normative patterns and patterns associated with specific risk factors. The current longitudinal study will employ three eye-tracking tasks that capture core components of attention in infants assessed at five time-points from 4 to 24 months of age. In addition, we will implement a rich assessment of temperamental negative affect, which is associated with the later emergence of anxiety and social withdrawal. Finally, we will assess known biopsychosocial markers of risk that probe neural (EEG), and parasympathetic (RSA) mechanisms. We will also examine moderating parent-centered mechanisms of socioemotional development. 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 trajectories of neural and behavioral development in order to identify clinically useful indicators of change across illness trajectories.