A developmental neuroscience perspective on affect-biased attention

Abstract

There is growing interest regarding the impact of affect-biased attention on psychopathology. However, most of the research to date lacks a developmental approach. In the present review, we examine the role affect-biased attention plays in shaping socioemotional trajectories within a developmental neuroscience framework. We propose that affect-biased attention, particularly if stable and entrenched, acts as a developmental tether that helps sustain early socioemotional and behavioral profiles over time, placing some individuals on maladaptive developmental trajectories. Although most of the evidence is found in the anxiety literature, we suggest that these relations may operate across multiple domains of interest, including positive affect, externalizing behaviors, drug use, and eating behaviors. We also review the general mechanisms and neural correlates of affect-biased attention, as well as the current evidence for the co-development of attention and affect. Based on the reviewed literature, we propose a model that may help us better understand the nuances of affect-biased attention across development. The model may serve as a strong foundation for ongoing attempts to identify neurocognitive mechanisms and intervene with individuals at risk. Finally, we discuss open issues for future research that may help bridge existing gaps in the literature.

Keywords: Affect-biased attention; Attention bias; Brain development; Emotion; Individual differences; Temperament.

Fig. 1

An illustration of the dot-probe task. In the dot-probe task, participants see a pair of stimuli simultaneously, one emotionally salient (e.g., threatening) and one neutral (e.g., non-threatening), most often for 500 ms. A probe replaces one of the two stimuli. The individual is required to respond as accurately and as quickly as possible to the probe. An attentional bias towards emotional stimuli is inferred when participants preferentially attend to emotional cues, resulting in decreased reaction times to probes replacing the emotional stimuli compared to the neutral stimuli. A direct extension of the dot-probe task has been attention bias modification (ABM), which is used to reduce affect-biased attention. The training procedure only uses incongruent trials. The logic is that by having the probe replace the emotional or neutral stimuli in all the trials, the individual implicitly learns to attend towards the neutral stimuli/away from the emotional stimuli.

Fig. 2

Conceptual cascade model depicting the normative relations of socioemotional functioning, affect-biased attention in orienting and alerting, and executive attention across development. Attention bias, as measured by tasks like the dot-probe, likely emerges from an interaction of the three attentional systems (alerting, orienting, and executive attention). There are early appearing biases based on individual factors (e.g., emotionality). These biases are later shaped by developmental processes (e.g., maturational, experiential, and social processes), represented in the “development” arrow. The influence of executive attention increases across development, illustrated by the change in color and shape of its paths. It is worth noting that even though this illustration would suggest a statistical meditation processes, these factors may also act as moderators. For instance, as portrayed, early socioemotional functioning impacts later affect-biased attention in orienting and alerting via executive attention. In turn, the relation of these biases on later socioemotional functioning is mediated by executive attention. There is some support for this in the exuberance–externalizing literature (e.g., Morales et al., 2016a). However, in the anxiety literature, there is evidence to suggest that executive attention might moderate this link rather than mediate it (e.g., Susa et al., 2012).