The influence of children's self-report trait anxiety and depression on visual search for emotional faces.
BACKGROUND
This study presents two experiments that investigated the relationship between 7- and 10-year-olds' levels of self-report trait anxiety and depression and their visual search for threatening (angry faces) and non-threatening (happy and neutral faces) stimuli.


METHODS
In both experiments a visual search paradigm was used to measure participants' reaction times to detect the presence or absence of angry, happy or neutral schematic faces (Experiment 1) or cartoon drawings (Experiment 2). On target present trials, a target face was displayed alongside three, five or seven distractor items. On target absent trials all items were distractors.


RESULTS
Both experiments demonstrated that on target absent (but not present) trials, increased levels of anxiety produced significantly faster search times in the angry face condition, but not in the neutral condition. In Experiment 2 there was some trend towards significance between anxiety and searches for happy faces in absent trials. There were no effects of depression on search times in any condition.


CONCLUSIONS
The results support previous work highlighting a specific link between anxiety and attention to threat in childhood.
Hadwin
Julie A
JA
Centre for Research into Psychological Development, Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, UK. jah7@soton.ac.uk
Donnelly
Nick
N
French
Christopher C
CC
Richards
Anne
A
Watts
Antonia
A
Daley
Dave
D
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000786:Anger; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D006113:United Kingdom