Disentangling Attentional Dynamics in Early Childhood: Response-Based Indicators of Avoidance of and Vigilance to Angry Faces in Relation to Anxiety and Traumatic Stress.

Abstract

Background: Threat-related attentional processes have been highlighted as an important mechanism in the developmental unfolding of childhood anxiety and stress-related disorders. The preschool affective dot probe task is a widely used measure of these attentional processes, however weak psychometric properties have led to inconsistent empirical findings and limited utility in guiding assessment and practice.

Methods: The current study employs a novel approach to scoring the dot probe task to examine the relationship between dimensions of threat-related attentional processes (e.g., bias, orientation, disengagement), trauma exposure, and child mental health in a sample of 232 preschool children. Young children (ages 4-6) and mothers participated in surveys and an affective dot probe task using emotional faces to measure trauma exposure, mother reports of child anxiety and traumatic stress symptoms, and child-reported traumatic stress. Novel response-based scoring was used to identify vigilance and avoidance indices of threat-related attentional processes.

Results: More pronounced avoidance (e.g., avoidant orientation) was related to reduced mental health symptoms and more pronounced vigilance (e.g., vigilance bias) was related to higher mental health symptoms, above and beyond the influence of trauma exposure. Trauma exposure moderated the influence of slow disengagement on child anxiety; for children not exposed to trauma, less pronounced slow disengagement was related to lower anxiety.

Conclusions: Response-based scoring offers a nuanced understanding of the mechanisms of threat-related bias and child psychopathology, offering a potential alternative to traditional scoring approaches. Future research should examine the temporally dynamic and context-dependent nature of response-based dimensions of threat-related attentional processes and children's psychopathology.