Abstract
This report examines the relationship between pediatric anxiety disorders and implicit bias evoked by threats. To do so, the report uses two tasks that assess implicit bias to negative-valence faces, the first by eye-gaze and the second by measuring body-movement parameters. The report contrasts task performance in 51 treatment-seeking, medication-free pediatric patients with anxiety disorders and 36 healthy peers. Among these youth, 53 completed an eye-gaze task, 74 completed a body-movement task, and 40 completed both tasks. On the eye-gaze task, patients displayed longer gaze duration on negative relative to non-negative valence faces than healthy peers, F(1, 174) = 8.27, p = .005. In contrast, on the body-movement task, patients displayed a greater tendency to behaviorally avoid negative-valence faces than healthy peers, F(1, 72) = 4.68, p = .033. Finally, implicit bias measures on the two tasks were correlated, r(38) = .31, p = .049. In sum, we found an association between pediatric anxiety disorders and implicit threat bias on two tasks, one measuring eye-gaze and the other measuring whole-body movements. Converging evidence for implicit threat bias encourages future research using multiple tasks in anxiety.
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We thank the participants and families, as well as the staff of the NIMH. This research was supported (in part) by the NIMH Intramural Research Program (ZIAMH002781-15; NCT00018057; DSP) and NIMH grants R61MH115113-01A1 and R21MH113946 (ERL).
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Abend, R., Bajaj, M.A., Matsumoto, C. et al. Converging Multi-modal Evidence for Implicit Threat-Related Bias in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 49, 227–240 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00712-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00712-w