It has been claimed that attentional bias causes anxiety. Attentional bias is when attention is automatically captured by certain stimuli. In terms of anxiety, this can be for example, the fear of spiders. Individuals who suffer from the phobia could, for example be reading a newspaper and related stimuli such as the word ‘web’ would capture their attention. Attentional bias has been found among many anxiety disorders including social phobia, OCD, trait anxiety, social phobia and generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). I will review evidence for the presence of attentional bias among anxiety disorders and try to determine whether attentional bias causes anxiety. I will review evidence from Macleod and Mathews (2002), Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, Damme and Wiersema (2006), and Bradley and Mogg (1999).
The topic of this essay will be to review the evidence that attentional bias causes anxiety. “There is widespread evidence of an attentional bias towards threat material in clinical anxiety” (MacLeod, Mathews & Tata, 1986; Mogg, Mathews & Eysenck, 1992). Certain treatments have been created for anxiety disorders that have been shown to reduce cognitive biases such as attentional bias, Fox et al (2005). This indicates that attentional bias is present within anxiety disorders. Stroop tasks have further developed research on attentional bias within anxiety as shown by Macleod (1991) and Macleod and Mathews (2002). Participants with anxiety disorders produce slower reaction times towards threat stimuli than the controls, indicating that attentional bias for threat related stimuli exists and has a greater effect on anxious individuals.
Macleod and Mathews (1991) induced attentional biases within a laboratory setting to determine that a ca...
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...hin anxiety then perhaps we can provide treatments to identify and alleviate anxiety.
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...n fear and arousal (Schmahl, Berne, Krause, Kleindienst, Valerius, Vermetten &ump; Bohus, 2009). The work of dampening this arousal is carried out by the pre-frontal region of the brain. Brain imaging has revealed that personal differences in the capacity to activate areas of the prefrontal cerebral cortex, which is believed to activate inhibitory responses, predict the capacity to repress negative feelings (Williams Sidis, Gordon &ump; Meares, 2006). Acetylcholine and norepinephrine in addition to serotonin are the main neurotransmitters in the circuit involved in the regulation of emotions. Imbalance of these neurotransmitters in conjunction with increased GABA activity is believed to have the capacity to result in intense mood swings similar to those of borderline personality disorder (Schmahl, Berne, Krause, Kleindienst, Valerius, Vermetten &ump; Bohus, 2009).
Previously, neuro-imaging studies have only observed the amygdala’s response to emotional face stimuli of the same cultural environment. This study went further and tested the amygdala’s response to participants of different cultures. In the study there were 22 adult participants: 12 native Japanese living in Japan (6 men and 6 women) and 10 Caucasians living in the United States (5 men and 5 women). The stimuli used to arouse the amygdala’s reactivity were 80 digitized grayscale pictures of faces that had different expressions. The facial expressions were of the four: neutral, happy, angry, and fearful. The photos were of 20 Japanese and 20 Caucasian men and women taken from the two groups. Participants were tested based on their own self-identified culture. The experimenters who conducted the studies used the participant’s native language. The independent variable in the study was the faces from the different cultures and the dependent variable was the amygdala’...
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Alice Park’s article in TIME Magazine, entitled “The Two Faces of Anxiety”, outlines the key positive and negative effects anxiety can have on both the individual and humanity as a whole. Because of the steady increase in diagnoses of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and similar mental illnesses, evaluating the origins of anxiety as well as its effects are crucial steps for developing both medical treatments and alternative methods of coping with the disorder. While many of the 40 million American adults suffering from anxiety believe that eliminating the feeling altogether is ideal, they fail to consider what psychologists have mounds of empirical evidence in support of: anxiety is not inherently adverse, and can, in many cases, be advantageous. Anxiety is generally understood to be a biological process in which specific symptoms, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, manifest as a response to stressful scenarios. In these potentially-fatal situations, the fight-or-flight response is an evolutionary reaction developed to prevent species from engaging in behavior that could result in extreme negative consequences, while also preparing them for possible conflict. Overall, this response is a constructive adaptation, but an issue arises when individuals face stressful, albeit non-fatal, situations. The body still experiences the same symptoms despite the absence of any “real” danger, and the person suffering from the anxiety feels as though he or she has little control over the behaviors brought on by the condition. Triggered by both genetic and environmental factors, there appears to be a wide variation in the severity of anxiety as well as what treatment methods are effective for each individual. However, many psychologists ...
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Anxiety disorders are very common and the causes vary. Symptoms of anxiety disorders can be disabling for some but in most cases people who suffer with it can still carry on social relationships and job functions. There are medical outlets a patient can seek to help cope and treat anxiety through biological treatment and psychotherapy. The authors of “Anxiety Reactivity and Anxiety Perseveration Represent Dissociable Dimensions of Trait Anxiety” focused on anxiety vulnerability by testing and measuring reactivity and preservation in regard to anxiety. (Rudaizky, page, MacLeod 2012).
Bearing in mind that an anxiety response is a result of various factors, there are different types of anxiety disorders. The most common type of anxiety disorders as described as specific phobias, social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder (PD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) (2016), specific phobias affect about 19 million adults in the U.S, while SAD affects 15 million, PD affects 6 million, GAD affects about 6.8 million, OCD affects about 2.2 million and PTSD affects 7.7 million adults respectively. Considering that anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S, yet only about one-third of those suffering receive treatment (ADAA, 2016).
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Fear and Anxiety are essential functions that occur in the brain that allow people to respond to stimuli appropriately. These feelings as normal as they are can cause problems and in 3.1 percent of adult Americans approximately 6.8 million people it does cause problems (“Generalized anxiety disorder”, 2014). A problem can arise when people have too much fear and anxiety; a problem is evident when it interferes with their life and their ability to do things. This is known as general anxiety disorder (GAD). When someone is suffering from generalized anxiety disorder they normally experience excessive exaggerated anxiety and worry about normal life events that give no clear reason for worry (“Generalized anxiety disorder”, 2014). This disorder can be debilitating and rule over people’s lives if it is severe and a better understanding of the disorder can be gained by looking at historical views, current views, causes and symptoms, case studies, differential diagnosis considerations, and treatment.
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