Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Associations Among Selective Attention, Memory Bias, Cognitive Errors and Symptoms of Anxiety in Youth

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

An Erratum to this article was published on 13 March 2007

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the linkages among selective attention, memory bias, cognitive errors, and anxiety problems by testing a model of the interrelations among these cognitive variables and childhood anxiety disorder symptoms. A community sample of 81 youth (38 females and 43 males) aged 9–17 years and their parents completed measures of the child’s anxiety disorder symptoms. Youth completed assessments measuring selective attention, memory bias, and cognitive errors. Results indicated that selective attention, memory bias, and cognitive errors were each correlated with childhood anxiety problems and provide support for a cognitive model of anxiety which posits that these three biases are associated with childhood anxiety problems. Only limited support for significant interrelations among selective attention, memory bias, and cognitive errors was found. Finally, results point towards an effective strategy for moving the assessment of selective attention to younger and community samples of youth.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We use the term “cognitive biases” to refer more generally each of these three types of cognitive biases.

References

  • Achenbach, T. M., McConaughy, S. H., & Howell, C. T. (1987). Child/adolescent behavioral and emotional problems: Implications of cross-informant correlations for situational specificity. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 213–232.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, J. C. (1994). Epidemiological issues. In: T. H. Ollendick & N. J. King (Eds.), International handbook of phobic and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents (pp. 43–65). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, B. P., Mogg, K., & Millar, N. H. (2000). Covert and overt orienting of attention to emotional faces in anxiety. Cognition & Emotion, 14, 789–808.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chorpita, B. F., Yim, L., Moffitt, C., Umemoto, L. A., & Francis, S. E. (2000). Assessment of symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety and depression in children: A revised child anxiety and depression scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 835–855.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cognition and Emotion Laboratory, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Australia. (2003). On-line Attentional Probe Task Program [Downloadable software]. Available at: http://www.psy.uwa.edu.au/user/labs/cogemo/AttProbe.html.

  • Costello, E. J., Egger, H. L., & Angold, A. (2004). Developmental epidemiology of anxiety disorders. In T. H. Ollendick & J. S. March (Eds.), Phobic and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents: A clinician’s guide to effective psychosocial and pharmacological interventions (pp. 61–91). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dadds, M. R., & Barrett, P. M. (2001). Psychological management of anxiety disorders in childhood. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 999–1011.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dalgleish, T. (1995). Performance on the emotional Stroop task in groups of anxious, expert, and control subjects: A comparison of computer and card presentation formats. Cognition & Emotion, 9, 341–362.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dalgleish, T., Taghavi, M. R., Neshat-Doost, H. T., Moradi, A. R., Canterbury, R., & Yule, W. (2003). Patterns of processing bias for emotional information across clinical disorders: A comparison of attention, Memory, and prospective cognition in children and adolescents with depression, generalized anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 32, 10–21.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Daleiden, E. L. (1998). Childhood anxiety and memory functioning: A comparison of systemic and processing accounts. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 68, 216–235.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kashani, J. H., & Orvaschel, H. (1990). A community study of anxiety in children and adolescents. American Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 313–318.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Keller, M. B., Lavori, P. W., Wunder, J., Beardslee, W. R., Schwartz, C. E., & Roth, J. (1992). Chronic course of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 31, 595–599.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Leitenberg, H., Yost, L. W., & Carroll-Wilson, M. (1986). Negative cognitive errors in children: Questionnaire development, normative data, and comparisons between children with and without self-reported symptoms of depression, low self-esteem, and evaluation anxiety. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 528–536.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • MacLeod, C., & Matthews, A. (1988). Anxiety and the allocation of attention to threat. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A, 653–670.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacLeod, C., Matthews, A., & Tata, P. (1986). Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 15–20.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mathews, A. (1990). Why worry? The cognitive function of anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 28, 455–468.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (1994). Cognitive approaches to emotion and emotional disorders. Annual Review of Psychology, 45, 25–50.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moradi, A. R., Taghavi, M. R., Neshat-Doost, H. T., Yule, W., & Dalgleish, T. (2000). Memory bias for emotional information in children and adolescents with posttraumatic stress disorder: A preliminary study. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 14, 521–532.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Neshat-Doost, H. T., Moradi, A. R., Taghavi, M. R., Yule, W., & Dalgleish, T. (1999). The development of a corpus of emotional words produced by children and adolescents. Personality & Individual Differences, 27, 433–451.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neshat-Doost, H. T., Moradi, A. R., Taghavi, M. R., Yule, W., & Dalgleish, T. (2000). Lack of attentional bias for emotional information in clinically depressed children and adolescents on the dot probe task. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines, 41, 363–368.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ollendick, T. H., & King, N. J. (1994). Diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of internalizing problems in children: The role of longitudinal data. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 62, 918–927.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Piacentini, J. C., Cohen, P., & Cohen, J. (1992). Combining discrepant diagnostic information from multiple sources: Are complex algorithms better than simple ones? Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 20, 51–63.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Reich, W., & Earls, F. (1987) Rules for making psychiatric diagnoses in children on the basis of multiple sources of information: Preliminary strategies. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 15, 601–616.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schippell, P. L., Vasey, M. W., Cravens-Brown, L. M., & Bretveld, R. A. (2003). Suppressed attention to rejection, ridicule, and failure cues: A unique correlate of reactive but not proactive aggression in youth. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 32, 40–55.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, W., Eschman, W., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user’s guide. Pittsburgh: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spence S. H. (1997). Structure of anxiety symptoms among children: A confirmatory factor-analytic study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106, 280–297.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tabachnick, G., & Fidell L. S. (2001). Using multivariate statistics (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thurber, S., Crow, L. A., & Thurber, J. A. (1990). Cognitive distortions and depression in psychiatrically disturbed adolescent inpatients. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 46, 57–60.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vasey, M. W., & Daleiden, E. L. (1996). Information-processing pathways to cognitive interference in childhood. In I. G. Sarason & G. R. Pirece (Eds.), Cognitive interference: Theories, methods, and findings (pp. 117–138). Hillsdale, NJ, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vasey M. W., Daleiden E. L., Williams L. L., & Brown L. M. (1995). Biased attention in childhood anxiety disorders: A preliminary study. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 23, 267–279.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vasey, M. W., El-Hag, N., & Daleiden E. L. (1996). Anxiety and the processing of emotionally-threatening stimuli: Distinctive patterns of selective attention among high- and low-test anxious children. Child Development, 67, 1173–1185.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vasey, M. W., & MacLeod, C. (2001). Information-processing factors in childhood anxiety: A review and developmental perspective. In M. W. Vasey & M. R. Dadds (Eds.), The developmental psychopathology of anxiety (pp. 253–277). London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waters, A. M., Lipp, O. V., & Spence, S. H. (2004). Attentional bias toward fear-related stimuli: An investigation with nonselected children and adults and children with anxiety disorders. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 89, 320–337.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Weems, C. F., Berman, S. L., Silverman, W. K., & Saavedra, L. S. (2001). Cognitive errors in youth with anxiety disorders: The linkages between negative cognitive errors and anxious symptoms. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 25, 559–575.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weems, C. F., Silverman, W. K., Saavedra, L. S., Pina, A. A., & Lumpkin, P. W. (1999). The discrimination of children’s phobias using the Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 40, 941–952.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weems, C. F., & Watts, S. E. (2005). Cognitive models of childhood anxiety. In F. Columbus (Ed.), Progress in anxiety disorder research. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH067572) awarded to Carl F. Weems.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, 70148, USA

    Sarah E. Watts & Carl F. Weems

Authors
  1. Sarah E. Watts
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Carl F. Weems
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carl F. Weems.

Additional information

An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-007-9121-8.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Watts, S.E., Weems, C.F. Associations Among Selective Attention, Memory Bias, Cognitive Errors and Symptoms of Anxiety in Youth. J Abnorm Child Psychol 34, 838–849 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-006-9066-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-006-9066-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation