title: The influence of emotional stimuli on attention orienting and inhibitory control in pediatric anxiety.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in children and adolescents, and are associated with aberrant emotion-related attention orienting and inhibitory control. While recent studies conducted with high-trait anxious adults have employed novel emotion-modified antisaccade tasks to examine the influence of emotional information on orienting and inhibition, similar studies have yet to be conducted in youths.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 22 children/adolescents diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and 22 age-matched healthy comparison youths. Participants completed an emotion-modified antisaccade task that was similar to those used in studies of high-trait anxious adults. This task probed the influence of abruptly appearing neutral, happy, angry, or fear stimuli on orienting (prosaccade) or inhibitory (antisaccade) responses.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Anxious compared to healthy children showed facilitated orienting toward angry stimuli. With respect to inhibitory processes, threat-related information improved antisaccade accuracy in healthy but not anxious youth. These findings were not linked to individual levels of reported anxiety or specific anxiety disorders.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Findings suggest that anxious relative to healthy children manifest enhanced orienting toward threat-related stimuli. In addition, the current findings suggest that threat may modulate inhibitory control during adolescent development.
authors.affiliation: Section of Developmental and Affective Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Sven C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Mueller
authors.forename: Michael G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Hardin
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mogg
authors.forename: Valerie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Benson
authors.forename: Brendan P
authors.initials: BP
authors.lastname: Bradley
authors.forename: Marie Louise
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Reinholdt-Dunne
authors.forename: Simon P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Liversedge
authors.forename: Daniel S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Pine
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ernst
mesh_terms: D000786:Anger; D001007:Anxiety / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D004644:Emotions; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012438:Saccades