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Emotional and Nonemotional Conflict Processing in Pediatric and Adult Anxiety Disorders.

ABSTRACT: Perturbations in emotional conflict adaptation, an implicit regulatory process, have been observed in adult anxiety disorders. However, findings remain inconsistent and restricted to adults. The current study compares conflict adaptation in youth and adults, with and without anxiety disorders. We predicted conflict adaptation would be present in the healthy but not the anxious groups.In a clinic setting, 111 participants (27 healthy youth, 22 anxious youth, 41 healthy adults, and 21 anxious adults) completed emotional and nonemotional conflict tasks. Groups did not differ (all p's >0.1) on intelligence quotient (IQ), gender, and socioeconomic status; age did not differ between healthy and anxious subjects in either age cohort. Separate four way mixed-design analyses of variance were conducted to test hypotheses regarding the influence of diagnosis, age group, and task type on accuracy (percent correct) and reaction time (RT) for conflict adaptation (incongruent trials preceded by incongruent vs. congruent trials) and conflict detection (incongruent vs. congruent trials).Measures of conflict adaptation did not interact with diagnosis or age. There was a significant main effect of conflict adaptation across the overall sample in the expected direction for accuracy, but not RT. The well-replicated conflict detection effect also did emerge across tasks, with slower RT and lower accuracy for incongruent than for congruent trials. These effects were greater for the emotional than for nonemotional tasks. Finally, there were age differences in accuracy-based conflict detection specific to the emotional task, for which the size of the effect was larger for youth than for adults.The current study of youth and adults did not replicate prior behavioral findings of failure to engage conflict adaptation in anxiety disorders. Therefore, more work is needed before widely adopting conflict adaptation paradigms as a standard neurocognitive marker for anxiety disorders.

SUBMITTER: Gold AL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4691651 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Emotional and Nonemotional Conflict Processing in Pediatric and Adult Anxiety Disorders.

Gold Andrea L AL Jarcho Johanna M JM Rosen Dana K DK Pine Daniel S DS Ernst Monique M

Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology 20151106 10

<h4>Objective</h4>Perturbations in emotional conflict adaptation, an implicit regulatory process, have been observed in adult anxiety disorders. However, findings remain inconsistent and restricted to adults. The current study compares conflict adaptation in youth and adults, with and without anxiety disorders. We predicted conflict adaptation would be present in the healthy but not the anxious groups.<h4>Methods</h4>In a clinic setting, 111 participants (27 healthy youth, 22 anxious youth, 41 h ...[more]

PMID: 26544668

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Project description:AimThe aim of this study is to examine emotional processing of infant displays in people with Eating Disorders (EDs).BackgroundSocial and emotional factors are implicated as causal and maintaining factors in EDs. Difficulties in emotional regulation have been mainly studied in relation to adult interactions, with less interest given to interactions with infants.MethodA sample of 138 women were recruited, of which 49 suffered from Anorexia Nervosa (AN), 16 from Bulimia Nervosa (BN), and 73 were healthy controls (HCs). Attentional responses to happy and sad infant faces were tested with the visual probe detection task. Emotional identification of, and reactivity to, infant displays were measured using self-report measures. Facial expressions to video clips depicting sad, happy and frustrated infants were also recorded.ResultsNo significant differences between groups were observed in the attentional response to infant photographs. However, there was a trend for patients to disengage from happy faces. People with EDs also reported lower positive ratings of happy infant displays and greater subjective negative reactions to sad infants. Finally, patients showed a significantly lower production of facial expressions, especially in response to the happy infant video clip. Insecure attachment was negatively correlated with positive facial expressions displayed in response to the happy infant and positively correlated with the intensity of negative emotions experienced in response to the sad infant video clip.ConclusionPeople with EDs do not have marked abnormalities in their attentional processing of infant emotional faces. However, they do have a reduction in facial affect particularly in response to happy infants. Also, they report greater negative reactions to sadness, and rate positive emotions less intensively than HCs. This pattern of emotional responsivity suggests abnormalities in social reward sensitivity and might indicate new treatment targets.

Dataset Information

Emotional and Nonemotional Conflict Processing in Pediatric and Adult Anxiety Disorders.

Publications

Emotional and Nonemotional Conflict Processing in Pediatric and Adult Anxiety Disorders.

Similar Datasets

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