Processing efficiency in anxiety: Evidence from eye-movements during visual search

Derakshan, Nazanin; Koster, Ernst H.W. · 2010 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2010.08.009

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Summary

This study investigates the nature of attentional bias in anxiety, specifically addressing the debate over whether anxiety facilitates the initial orienting of attention toward threat or impairs the disengagement of attention from it. While cognitive models often posit that anxious individuals exhibit heightened vigilance for threatening stimuli, previous research using manual reaction times has yielded conflicting results regarding the temporal stage of this bias. Derakshan and Koster (2010) aimed to clarify this by distinguishing between attentional operations before and after threat detection, utilizing eye-tracking technology to provide a more precise measure of visual attention than manual responses alone. The study was motivated by the need to test predictions from Attentional Control Theory, which suggests that anxiety disrupts the balance between stimulus-driven and goal-directed attentional systems, thereby reducing processing efficiency. The researchers employed a visual search task with 77 participants, categorized into high and low trait anxiety groups based on median splits of their State-Trait Anxiety Inventory scores. Participants viewed displays of eight computer-generated faces (angry, happy, or neutral) and were instructed to identify the "odd-one-out" target. The experimental design included six conditions varying the emotional expression of the target and the surrounding crowd. Eye movements were recorded using an LC Technologies Eyegaze system, allowing the authors to analyze fixations on crowd faces prior to target detection (assessing orienting) and processing time after target fixation (assessing disengagement and decision-making). This methodology enabled a fine-grained examination of attentional deployment that manual response latencies could not provide. The results indicated that high-anxious individuals did not exhibit facilitated attentional orienting toward threat nor impaired disengagement from threat at the level of visual attention. Eye-movement indices prior to target detection, such as the number of fixations on crowd faces and dwell time, showed no significant differences between high and low anxious groups. However, significant differences emerged in processing efficiency after target detection. High-anxious individuals took significantly longer to process targets when both the target and the crowd contained emotional information (e.g., an angry target in a happy crowd). This delay was characterized by additional fixations on the crowd after the target had been identified, indicating that the presence of emotional information disrupted goal-directed processing and increased decision times, rather than affecting initial visual capture. These findings challenge the prevailing view that anxiety is characterized by early attentional biases toward threat. Instead, the study supports the notion that anxiety primarily reduces processing efficiency, particularly when cognitive resources are taxed by conflicting emotional information. The results suggest that attentional bias in anxiety may not reside at the level of visuo-spatial attention but rather in the disruption of higher-level cognitive control and decision-making processes. This distinction has important implications for theoretical models of anxiety, suggesting that interventions and assessments should focus on processing efficiency and the interference caused by emotional stimuli, rather than solely on initial attentional capture.

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• visual search