Abstract:
Anxiety disorders in adults have been associated with biased processing of emotional information which may be due to a deficit in attentional control. This deficit leads to an hypervigilance and a selective attention toward threatening information. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to study this topic in anxious adults. Similar biases have been reported in children with anxiety but researches investigating the ERPs components underpinning these biases are more scarce. However, the understanding of the neural correlates of attentional biases in anxious children seem quite important since they could play a role in the etiology and the maintenance of this disorder. This review summarizes the results of researches having used ERPs to index emotional processing and attention control in children suffering from anxiety. We will focus on the P1, indexing basic visual perceptual processing, the N2, thought to reflect cognitive control process, the P3 typically associated with response inhibition, and the late positive potential (LPP) that indicates sustained attention toward motivationally salient stimuli. We will also examine the error-related negativity (ERN) that indexes monitoring system for detecting errors. Electro-physiological studies generally reported increased amplitudes of these components in anxious children, even when they did not differ from typically developing children at a behavioral level. These results suggest diminished cognitive control that influences children\'s selective attention mechanisms toward threatening information. Theoretical perspectives and implications for future researches will be discussed in the framework of current models of childhood anxiety.
摘要:
成人焦虑症与情绪信息的偏见处理有关,这可能是由于注意力控制不足所致。这种缺陷导致高度警惕和对威胁性信息的选择性关注。事件相关电位(ERP)已用于研究焦虑成年人的这一主题。在患有焦虑症的儿童中已经报道了类似的偏见,但是调查支撑这些偏见的ERPs成分的研究更为稀缺。然而,对焦虑儿童注意偏差的神经相关性的理解似乎非常重要,因为它们可能在这种疾病的病因和维持中发挥作用。这篇综述总结了使用ERP对患有焦虑症的儿童的情绪处理和注意力控制进行索引的研究结果。我们将重点放在P1,索引基本的视觉感知处理,N2,被认为反映了认知控制过程,P3通常与反应抑制有关,和晚期正电位(LPP),表明对动机突出刺激的持续关注。我们还将检查与错误相关的负(ERN),该索引用于检测错误的监控系统。电生理研究通常报告这些成分在焦虑儿童中的振幅增加,即使他们在行为水平上与通常发育中的儿童没有区别。这些结果表明,认知控制减弱会影响儿童对威胁性信息的选择性注意机制。将在当前儿童焦虑模型的框架内讨论理论观点和对未来研究的启示。