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

移动眼动追踪作为研究社会情感发展的工具：社会背景下与威胁相关的注意力

基本信息

批准号：
9353875
负责人：
Koraly E Perez-Edgar
金额：
$ 19.65万
依托单位：
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2016-09-20 至 2019-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

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.

项目概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此外，研究人员还可以加剧或改善特质焦虑的水平。通过在实验室中实验性地操纵注意力偏差来控制焦虑的思想和行为。研究人员认为，对威胁的关注偏差可能会导致焦虑。然而，与许多焦虑的出现一样，注意力的作用得到了有用的概念证明。文献中，这些研究依赖于基于计算机的任务，这些任务向个体呈现静态的情绪面孔和偏差是根据行为反应时间（RT）或对刺激的眼球追踪模式推断出来的。这些数据虽然信息丰富，但生态有效性水平相对较低，因为刺激是单一的。此外，这些任务需要定向。然而，基本理论表明，预先选择的刺激，而不是与威胁相关的注意力选择。注意力与社交退缩/焦虑有关，特别是因为社交和威胁方面环境是不可预测的、多维的，并且需要孩子的灵活性，因此，我们知之甚少。关于体内注意力偏差如何与早期社会行为相关的任何事情。我们需要能够更密切地捕捉孩子对其环境的体验的方法（社会和非社会）并且以儿童为中心并以儿童为导向。当前的提案解决了这些差距。通过 (1) 在 (2) 有焦虑气质风险的幼儿中测试创新的移动眼动追踪系统因为他们 (3) 对威胁范式进行静态和交互式关注。在实验室气质评估期间连续测量眼睛凝视电池（Lab-TAB）旨在引发对假定的社会和非社会威胁的恐惧行为。双人情节将用于检查联合游戏期间部署的注意力过程，我们重点关注 4 到 6 年的儿童。老年儿童——焦虑症发作前的一个年龄阶段，但在此期间，社交退缩是对于性情恐惧的孩子来说，这种情况更为明显。因此，我们将检查孩子们的行为是否有所不同。抑制（BI）是我们最强的焦虑气质预测因子，它在静止时与威胁相关的注意力有所不同最后，我们将看看是久坐还是移动。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。这一研究方向反映了研究领域标准中对整合多层次的关注通过检查对潜在威胁（负价系统）的反应、注意力模式的机制（认知系统）和不同社会情感背景下的早期影响模式（负价我们还通过描述 NIMH 目标 2 的标记来探讨其核心。行为发展，以确定临床上有用的疾病轨迹变化指标。