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ENGAGEMENT with ANGRY FACES DURING ATTENTIONAL BIAS MODIFICATION: INSIGHTS from the N2pc

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ENGAGEMENT with ANGRY FACES DURING ATTENTIONAL BIAS MODIFICATION: INSIGHTS from the N2pc View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington ENGAGEMENT WITH ANGRY FACES DURING ATTENTIONAL BIAS MODIFICATION: INSIGHTS FROM THE N2pc BY LISA MICHELLE HUNKIN A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience Victoria University of Wellington 2014 ENGAGEMENT WITH THREAT IN ATTENTIONAL BIAS MODIFICATION i Abstract Healthy individuals show an attentional bias toward threat, and this bias is exaggerated in anxious individuals. Recent studies have shown that training anxious individuals to attend to neutral information can reduce their threat bias and anxiety levels. This training is called attentional bias modification (ABM). However, despite the large literature on ABM, it is still unclear how ABM achieves its effects. Two mechanisms – facilitated engagement with threat, and delayed disengagement from threat – are thought to be involved in the threat bias. In this thesis, I investigated the effects of ABM on engagement with angry faces. First, in Experiment 1 I developed an ABM task to train healthy individuals to attend to either angry or neutral faces. Participants completed a dot-probe task in which they saw two faces – one angry and one neutral – followed by a target that appeared more often in the location of either the angry or neutral face (depending on their respective training condition). Experiment 1 was successful at inducing a bias. Next, Experiment 2 used this task to investigate the effects of ABM on event-related potentials before, during, and after training. The N2pc component, which provides a measure of attentional engagement, was used to investigate changes in engagement with angry and neutral faces as a function of training. Consistent with previous studies, there was an overall N2pc for the angry face, indicating that participants were engaging their attention with the angry face. However, the N2pc was not affected by training, even though participants were moving their eyes in the training-congruent direction during training, indicating sensitivity to the training contingency. These results suggest that ABM does not affect attentional engagement with threat stimuli. Rather, it is likely that an improved ability to disengage attention from threat stimuli underlies ABM’s training effects. ii ENGAGEMENT WITH THREAT IN ATTENTIONAL BIAS MODIFICATION Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Gina Grimshaw. I feel like I have come a long way over the last year, in no small part thanks to your gentle guidance and support – especially as my thesis due date loomed near! I am so grateful for the time that you have invested in helping me to become a better researcher. It has been a privilege to be your student. Thank you to the members of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab – Angus, Hazel, Jess, Josh, Kealagh, Laura, Lauren, Michael, Sam, Sophie, and Will. I think that we are really lucky to have such a fun and co-operative lab environment, and you guys make it that way. I will miss working with you. Thanks in particular to Josh Foster for training me up in EEG technique and analysis and for being a great sounding board, Angus Chapman for assisting with data collection, and Michael Tooley for saving me when EEG recording went awry. Thanks also to my family, as I know that I wouldn’t be doing what I am today if you hadn’t encouraged me to extend myself and give the hard things a go. Thanks Mum for proofreading this thesis and teaching me the difference between ‘toward’ and ‘towards’. And thank you to my partner, Matt, for listening to my practice presentations a few more times than you would’ve cared to, and for being so patient over the last year. Finally, I received a Freemasons’ Undergraduate Scholarship in Part I of this Master’s, and some of that scholarship has supported my study for this year as well. I am very appreciative of the Freemasons’ financial support. ENGAGEMENT WITH THREAT IN ATTENTIONAL BIAS MODIFICATION iii Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ v List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Mechanisms of Attention ....................................................................................................... 1 Theories of Attention to Threat .............................................................................................. 2 Attention to Threat: The Dot-Probe Task .............................................................................. 3 Attention to Threat: Evidence from Other Tasks ................................................................... 4 Attention to Threat: Electrophysiological Evidence .............................................................. 5 C1 and P1. .......................................................................................................................... 6 N2pc. .................................................................................................................................. 6 Attentional Bias Modification ................................................................................................ 9 Attentional Bias Modification: Electrophysiological Evidence .......................................... 11 The Current Experiments ..................................................................................................... 13 Experiment 1a .......................................................................................................................... 15 Method ..................................................................................................................................... 16 Participants ........................................................................................................................... 16 Apparatus ............................................................................................................................. 17 Stimuli .................................................................................................................................. 17 Procedure ............................................................................................................................. 18 Results ...................................................................................................................................... 20 Questionnaires ...................................................................................................................... 20 RTs ....................................................................................................................................... 20 Accuracy. .......................................................................................................................... 23 Summary .............................................................................................................................. 24 Experiment 1b .......................................................................................................................... 24 Method ..................................................................................................................................... 24 Participants ........................................................................................................................... 24 Apparatus, Stimuli, and Procedure ...................................................................................... 25 Results ...................................................................................................................................... 26 RTs ....................................................................................................................................... 26 iv ENGAGEMENT WITH THREAT IN ATTENTIONAL BIAS MODIFICATION Accuracy .............................................................................................................................. 28 Summary of Experiments 1a and 1b .................................................................................... 28 Experiment 2 ............................................................................................................................ 29 Method ..................................................................................................................................... 31 Participants ........................................................................................................................... 31 Apparatus, Stimuli, and Procedure ...................................................................................... 32 ERP Recording and Analysis ..............................................................................................
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