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Implementation of the diffusion model on dot-probe task performance in children with behavioral inhibition

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Abstract

Attentional bias to threat, the process of preferentially attending to potentially threatening environmental stimuli over neutral stimuli, is positively associated with behavioral inhibition (BI) and trait anxiety. However, the most used measure of attentional bias to threat, the dot-probe task, has been criticized for demonstrating poor reliability. The present study aimed to assess whether utilizing a sequential sampling model to describe performance could detect adequate test–retest reliability for the dot-probe task, demonstrate stronger cueing effects, and improve the association with neural signals of early attention. One hundred and twenty children aged 9–12 years completed the dot-probe task twice. During the second administration, event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained as time-sensitive neural markers of attention. BI was not associated with traditional or diffusion model measures of performance. Traditional and diffusion model measures of performance were also not associated with N1, P2, or N2 ERP amplitude. There were main effects of Visit, in which RTs were faster and standard deviation of RT smaller during the second administration due to an increase in drift rate and a decrease in non-decision time. The traditional RT bias score (r = 0.06) and bias scores formed via diffusion model parameters (all r’s < 0.40) all demonstrated poor reliability. Results confirm recommendations to move away from using the dot-probe task as the primary or sole index of attentional bias.

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Raw study data used in this publication is available upon request.

Notes

  1. The information used to judge the orientation of the target is also influenced by learned factors that are independent of the perceptual qualities of the target itself (e.g. including learning to suppress distractors, see Sewell et al. (2018)). This latter process, however, is less likely to be observed in a task like the dot-probe, where explicit distractors are not present.

  2. Results did not change when a cutoff of < 300 ms was applied to better approximate cutoffs used for diffusion modeling.

  3. Because the CDF plots suggested the presence of some misfits, 1000 datasets were subsequently simulated. Participants who exhibited a lower model fit (defined as < 10% quantile of the distribution of p values) for any of the four conditions were removed from analysis. This resulted in a reduced N = 57 (22 BI, 34 Controls). CDF plots generated from the remaining participants demonstrated improved model fit, but primary results did not change. See Supplementary Table 2 and Supplementary Fig. 1.

  4. A Cue (3: Neutral, Threat Congruent, Threat Incongruent) Visit (2) BI (2) GLM replicated these effects. However, this GLM identified an additional Visit (2) Cue (3) interaction on Ter (F(2, 236) = 5.17, p = 0.006, η2 = 0.042) in which the Neutral cue trials did not differ between visit 1 and 2 as much as the task condition cue trials did.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Pennsylvania State University Social, Life, and Engineering Sciences Imaging Center (SLEIC) Human Electrophysiology Facility for supporting data collection, the TAU/NIMH ABMT Initiative for providing the task toolkit, and the many individuals who contributed to data collection and data processing. We would especially like to thank the parents of the children who participated and continue to participate in our studies.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Grant [R01MH094633] to Koraly Pérez-Edgar.

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  1. Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, USA

    Shane Wise, Cynthia Huang-Pollock & Koraly Pérez-Edgar

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  1. Shane Wise
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Correspondence to Shane Wise.

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Study procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB number PRAMS00038109) of The Pennsylvania State University. Families were compensated for their participation.

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Wise, S., Huang-Pollock, C. & Pérez-Edgar, K. Implementation of the diffusion model on dot-probe task performance in children with behavioral inhibition. Psychological Research 86, 831–843 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01532-3

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