Rosen, Dana
(2017)
ATTENTION DURING VIRTUAL PEER FEEDBACK IN YOUTH WITH A HISTORY OF ANXIETY COMPARED TO HEALTHY YOUTH.
Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Attention bias toward threatening stimuli has long been theorized to play a causal role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. However, most research has examined attentional patterns at initial stages of orienting although later stages of attention may be just as or more of a critical index to study. Research on attentional biases is typically studied in laboratory paradigms that simply present faces as stimuli, therefore limiting the ecological validity of attentional research, particularly when studying youth. In order to evaluate attentional biases toward threat in a paradigm that mimics situations occurring in adolescents’ life, this study examined attention in youth using eye-tracking methodology using the Chatroom-Interact task. Additionally this study assessed pupil dilation as an index of cognitive and emotional processing during the Chatroom-Interact task. 25 previously treated anxious youth (18 F, mean age= 13.6) and 22 healthy youth (13 F, mean age= 13.8) completed this task. In this task, virtual peers are shown to either choose (accept) or reject the participants to talk about a common interest. We hypothesized that the previously-treated anxious youth would spend longer time looking at their photo when rejected by peers compared to healthy youth. Furthermore, we expected the previously-treated anxious youth would display greater recruitment of attentional resources when coping with rejection, as indexed by greater pupil dilation, compared to healthy youth. Across all participants, we expected that youth would spend longer looking at their own photo and have greater pupil dilation during rejection feedback compared to non-feedback, control trials. In order to examine if hypotheses were specific to rejection feedback, we examined acceptance feedback as well. We found that social feedback from peers (rejection and acceptance) captures attention and is associated with greater pupillary reactivity compared to the non-feedback control condition across all youth. This finding may suggest that psychotherapy treatment ameliorated attentional biases toward threat in anxious youth. Furthermore, during acceptance feedback, the previously treated anxious youth displayed greater pupil response compared to healthy youth, suggesting positive feedback from peers may differentially affect anxious youth.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
15 June 2017 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
18 October 2016 |
| Approval Date: |
15 June 2017 |
| Submission Date: |
10 April 2017 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
55 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Psychology |
| Degree: |
MS - Master of Science |
| Thesis Type: |
Master's Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
attention, anxiety, children, adolescents |
| Date Deposited: |
15 Jun 2017 23:23 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Jun 2017 23:23 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/31375 |
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