Attentional bias towards angry faces in childhood anxiety disorders

Objective: To examine attentional bias towards angry and happy faces in 8-12 year old children with anxiety disorders (n = 29) and non-anxious controls (n = 24). Method: Children completed a visual-probe task in which pairs of angry/neutral and happy/neutral faces were displayed for 500 ms and were replaced by a visual probe in the spatial location of one of the faces. Results: Children with more severe anxiety showed an attentional bias towards angry relative to neutral faces, compared with anxious children who had milder anxiety and non-anxious control children, both of whom did not show an attentional bias for angry faces. Unexpectedly, all groups showed an attentional bias towards happy faces relative to neutral ones. Conclusions: Anxiety symptom severity increases attention to threat stimuli in anxious children. This association may be due to differing threat appraisal processes or emotion regulation strategies.