Institute of Psychology
Institute of Psychology
New paper published!
5 September 2022, by Anke Ellegast
We are happy to share that a new paper is out! Congratulations!
In our very recently published paper, we investigated how instructed avoidance of neutral and threatening pictures affects neural picture processing and if the individual levels of anxious arousal and worry additionally modulate the processing. We found that threatening compared to neutral pictures were associated with increased early attention and in-depth processing. Our task instruction modulated this effect, as this was lower during instructed avoidance. Further, participants with increased worry show heightened automatic attention, followed by reduced in-depth processing of threatening pictures. After a rest period of 10 minutes, all pictures were presented again. Results showed that threatening pictures were associated with increased in-depth processing, with no difference between previously avoided and maintained pictures. Together, these result illustrate that the avoidance of threat results in the desired short-term effects but leads to increased processing in the long-term, which may conflict with long-term adaptation.
Kausche, F. M., Härpfer, K., Carsten, H. P., Kathmann, N., & Riesel, A. (2022). Early hypervigilance and later avoidance: Event-related potentials track the processing of threatening stimuli in anxiety. Behavior Research and Therapy,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2022.104181
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