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Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD

Using variants of the emotional Stroop task (EST), a large number of studies demonstrated attentional biases in individuals with PTSD across different types of trauma. However, the specificity and robustness of the emotional Stroop effect in PTSD have been questioned recently. In particular, the par...

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Autores principales: Wittekind, Charlotte E., Muhtz, Christoph, Jelinek, Lena, Moritz, Steffen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284993/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25610407
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01474
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author Wittekind, Charlotte E.
Muhtz, Christoph
Jelinek, Lena
Moritz, Steffen
author_facet Wittekind, Charlotte E.
Muhtz, Christoph
Jelinek, Lena
Moritz, Steffen
author_sort Wittekind, Charlotte E.
collection PubMed
description Using variants of the emotional Stroop task (EST), a large number of studies demonstrated attentional biases in individuals with PTSD across different types of trauma. However, the specificity and robustness of the emotional Stroop effect in PTSD have been questioned recently. In particular, the paradigm cannot disentangle underlying cognitive mechanisms. Transgenerational studies provide evidence that consequences of trauma are not limited to the traumatized people, but extend to close relatives, especially the children. To further investigate attentional biases in PTSD and to shed light on the underlying cognitive mechanism(s), a spatial-cueing paradigm with pictures of different emotional valence (neutral, anxiety, depression, trauma) was administered to individuals displaced as children during World War II (WWII) with (n = 22) and without PTSD (n = 26) as well as to non-traumatized controls (n = 22). To assess whether parental PTSD is associated with biased information processing in children, each one adult offspring was also included in the study. PTSD was not associated with attentional biases for trauma-related stimuli. There was no evidence for a transgenerational transmission of biased information processing. However, when samples were regrouped based on current depression, a reduced inhibition of return (IOR) effect emerged for depression-related cues. IOR refers to the phenomenon that with longer intervals between cue and target the validity effect is reversed: uncued locations are associated with shorter and cued locations with longer RTs. The results diverge from EST studies and demonstrate that findings on attentional biases yield equivocal results across different paradigms. Attentional biases for trauma-related material may only appear for verbal but not for visual stimuli in an elderly population with childhood trauma with PTSD. Future studies should more closely investigate whether findings from younger trauma populations also manifest in older trauma survivors.
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spelling pubmed-42849932015-01-21 Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD Wittekind, Charlotte E. Muhtz, Christoph Jelinek, Lena Moritz, Steffen Front Psychol Psychology Using variants of the emotional Stroop task (EST), a large number of studies demonstrated attentional biases in individuals with PTSD across different types of trauma. However, the specificity and robustness of the emotional Stroop effect in PTSD have been questioned recently. In particular, the paradigm cannot disentangle underlying cognitive mechanisms. Transgenerational studies provide evidence that consequences of trauma are not limited to the traumatized people, but extend to close relatives, especially the children. To further investigate attentional biases in PTSD and to shed light on the underlying cognitive mechanism(s), a spatial-cueing paradigm with pictures of different emotional valence (neutral, anxiety, depression, trauma) was administered to individuals displaced as children during World War II (WWII) with (n = 22) and without PTSD (n = 26) as well as to non-traumatized controls (n = 22). To assess whether parental PTSD is associated with biased information processing in children, each one adult offspring was also included in the study. PTSD was not associated with attentional biases for trauma-related stimuli. There was no evidence for a transgenerational transmission of biased information processing. However, when samples were regrouped based on current depression, a reduced inhibition of return (IOR) effect emerged for depression-related cues. IOR refers to the phenomenon that with longer intervals between cue and target the validity effect is reversed: uncued locations are associated with shorter and cued locations with longer RTs. The results diverge from EST studies and demonstrate that findings on attentional biases yield equivocal results across different paradigms. Attentional biases for trauma-related material may only appear for verbal but not for visual stimuli in an elderly population with childhood trauma with PTSD. Future studies should more closely investigate whether findings from younger trauma populations also manifest in older trauma survivors. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-01-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4284993/ /pubmed/25610407 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01474 Text en Copyright © 2015 Wittekind, Muhtz, Jelinek and Moritz. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Wittekind, Charlotte E.
Muhtz, Christoph
Jelinek, Lena
Moritz, Steffen
Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD
title Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD
title_full Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD
title_fullStr Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD
title_full_unstemmed Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD
title_short Depression, not PTSD, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with PTSD
title_sort depression, not ptsd, is associated with attentional biases for emotional visual cues in early traumatized individuals with ptsd
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284993/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25610407
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01474
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