Douglas Derryberry

Anxiety-Related Attentional Biases and Their Regulation by Attentional Control

This study examined the role of self-reported attentional control in regulating attentional biases related to trait anxiety. Simple detection targets were preceded by cues labeling potential target locations as threatening (likely to result in negative feedback) or safe (likely to result in positive feedback). Trait anxious participants showed an early attentional bias favoring the threatening location 250 ms after the cue and a late bias favoring the safe location 500 ms after the cue. The anxiety-related threat bias was moderated by attentional control at the 500-ms delay: Anxious participants with poor attentional control still showed the threat bias, whereas those with good control were better able to shift from the threatening location. Thus, skilled control of voluntary attention may allow anxious persons to limit the impact of threatening information.

Reactive and effortful processes in the organization of temperament.

Self-organization can be approached in terms of developmental processes occurring within and between component systems of temperament. Within-system organization involves progressive shaping of cortical representations by subcortical motivational systems. As cortical representations develop, they feed back to provide motivational systems with enhanced detection and guidance capabilities. These reciprocal influences may amplify the underlying motivational functions and promote excessive impulsivity or anxiety. However, these processes also depend upon interactions arising between motivational and attentional systems. We discuss these between-system effects by considering the regulation of approach motivation by reactive attentional processes related to fear and by more voluntary processes related to effortful control. It is suggested than anxious and impulsive psychopathology may reflect limitations in these dual means of control, which can take the form of overregulation as well as underregulation.

Arousal, affect, and attention as components of temperament.

Contemporary models of human temperament have been based on the general constructs of arousal, emotion, and self-regulation. In order to more precisely investigate these constructs, they were theoretically decomposed into 19 subconstructs, and homogeneous scales were developed to assess them. The scales were constructed through an item-selection technique that maximized internal consistency and minimized conceptual overlap. Correlational and factor analyses suggested that arousal can be usefully assessed in terms of its central, autonomic, and motor components. The emotions of sadness, relief, and low-intensity pleasure were most closely related to the measures of central arousal. Emotions of fear, frustration, discomfort, and high-intensity pleasure were more closely related to measures of attentional control. We discuss these findings in terms of the functional relations between arousal, emotion, and attention.

Electrophysiological Responses to Errors and Feedback in the Process of Action Regulation

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is believed to be involved in the executive control of actions, such as in monitoring conflicting response demands, detecting errors, and evaluating the emotional significance of events. In this study, participants performed a task in which evaluative feedback was delayed, so that it was irrelevant to immediate response control but retained its emotional value as a performance indicator. We found that a medial frontal feedback-related negativity similar to the error-related negativity (ERN) tracked affective response to the feedback and predicted subsequent performance. Source analysis of the feedback-related negativity and ERN revealed a common dorsomedial ACC source and a rostromedial ACC source specific to the ERN. The oscillatory nature of these sources provides further evidence that the ERN reflects ongoing theta activity generated in the mediofrontal regions. These results suggest that action regulation by the cingulate gyrus may require the entrainment of multiple structures of the Papez corticolimbic circuit.

Temperament and attention : orienting toward and away from positive and negative signals

Two studies used a target detection task to examine temperament-related attentional biases toward and away from significant stimuli. Pretarget cues were used to orient attention to locations carrying a positive incentive value (where points could be gained) or a negative value (where points could be lost). Under both involuntary and voluntary conditions, extraverts were slow to shift attention away from positive locations, whereas introverts were slow to shift from negative locations. These biases were enhanced on trials following negative feedback and tended to be strongest in Ss high in Neuroticism. The findings support models proposing that Extraversion reflects the combined activity of positive (strongest in extraverts) and negative (strongest in introverts) incentive motivational processes. They further suggest that incentive processes regulate the ability to shift attention away from, rather than toward, significant stimuli.

Anxiety and attentional focusing: trait, state and hemispheric influences

Abstract Two studies employed a global/local perceptual task to examine individual differences and mechanisms involved in attentional focusing. Subjects searched for letter targets appearing at either the local or global level within a composite stimulus. Positive and negative motivational states were created by presenting the task within alternating games where points were likely to be gained or lost. Both studies found an interaction between trait anxiety and motivational state, with high trait anxious subjects showing attentional focusing (i.e. relatively fast processing of local targets) during the negative games. This anxiety-related focusing was not accompanied by delays in responding to global targets. In addition, experiment 1 found that the anxiety-related focusing during the negative games was relatively constant, without adjusting to the incentive value of each trial. Experiment 2 found the focusing effect to be limited to targets presented to the right visual field, which is consistent with models relating the left hemisphere to anxiety and local processing. In general, these findings suggest that trait anxiety leads to enhanced left hemisphere activation during negative motivational states, which in turn focuses attention by facilitating local perceptual information.

Neural Mechanisms of Emotion.

When viewed from an evolutionary perspective, the neural mechanisms of emotion can be seen to be distributed across the brainstem, limbic, paralimbic, and neocortical regions. Descending and ascending connections among these levels are discussed in relation to three types of emotional processes: peripheral effects on patterned bodily responses, central effects on cognitive processing, and subjective emotional experience. Descending influences from the higher to the lower levels allow for an increasing coordination and flexibility of emotional responses, culminating in patterned activity across the peripheral endocrine, autonomic, and motor systems. Ascending influences from lower to higher levels provide preparatory modulation of cortical pathways, thus enabling perceptual and cognitive processing that is adaptive given the current emotional state. The bodily feelings of emotion are a function of cortical interoceptive sensory fields, activated by centrally generated signals or peripheral inputs from the body.

Regulatory processes and the development of cognitive representations

Although the construct of regulation is usually applied to ongoing behavior, it also has implications for ongoing cognition and the development of cognitive representations. We propose that subcortical motivational systems influence cortical representations in two general ways. First, they regulate response processes, promoting a general selection of information to which the child is exposed. Second, motivational systems regulate attention, promoting a more selective stabilization of representations for motivationally relevant sources of information. Together with the environment, these regulatory processes shape the childs developing representations. Individual differences in these processes result in cortical representational systems that enhance the motivational systems* ability to detect relevant inputs and to guide behavior in light of them. Examples are provided that focus on fearful children, discussing how their self-representation may contribute to anxious psychopathology.

Incentive and feedback effects on target detection a chronometric analysis of gray's model of temperament

Abstract Chronometric (i.e. reaction time) techniques were used to investigate the response, arousal, and attentional components of Grays (1971, 1982) model of temperament. Subjects were tested in a game context, where each trial consisted of an incentive warning signal (positive or negative), a visual detection target (left or right visual field), and a feedback signal (positive or negative). Several findings were consistent with Grays proposal that extraverts tend to respond impulsively given signals of reward whereas introverts respond with inhibition given signals of punishment. Extraverts made more overall errors than introverts in the first experiment, and more errors following positive incentive signals in the second study. In addition, introverts responded more slowly than extraverts following negative feedback in the first study. Evidence was also found in support of Grays proposal that introverts allocate more attention to negative cues than extraverts. Following negative feedback, introverts showed a reflexive attentional bias in favor of negative locations in the second experiment. However, no support was found for the temperamental differences in phasic arousal suggested by Grays model. The magnitude and build up of general alerting effects following positive and negative incentives were similar for introverts and extraverts.

Temperament and the self-organization of personality

This paper explores the development of cortical plasticity and cognitive representations in light of temperamental differences in basic motivational systems. Motivational systems related to reward/approach and punishment/avoidance begin to function early in life. By controlling the childs behavioral and emotional reactions, these systems provide exteroceptive and interoceptive information capable of stabilizing cortical synapses through use-dependent processes. By controlling attention, the motivational systems further contribute to synaptic stabilization through modulatory processes. As a result, children with strong reward/approach systems are likely to develop representations that emphasize potential rewards and frustrations and may become vulnerable to impulsive disorders. Children with strong punishment/avoidance systems may develop representations emphasizing punishment and relief, along with a vulnerability to anxiety disorders. These motivationally constructed representations differentiate in varied ways across domains involving the physical world, moral rules, and the self and, thus, contribute to the various forms of impulsive and anxious psychopathology.