Andreas Blicher Skanborg defends his PhD thesis

Title

'Mechanisms of selective attention in anxiety and depression'

Time and place

Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 13:00.

The defence will take place online on Zoom.

Click here to attend the defence on Zoom.

Passcode: 023285.

Due to the COVID-19 regulations, there will unfortunately not be a reception after the defence.

Assessment committee

• Associate Professor Guido Makransky, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (chair)

• Professor Ernst Koster, Ghent University, Belgium

• Professor Matthew Garner, University of Southampton, United Kingdom

Abstract

The thesis consists of a synopsis and five studies investigating the mechanisms of selective attention in anxiety and depression. The synopsis contains a review of reaction-time studies investigating the engagement and disengagement components of attentional bias to emotional stimuli. The review suggested that there is a lack of studies that i) include both clinical and non-clinical participants, ii) include measures of both covert and overt attention iii), differentiate between different attentional components iv), investigate different stages of information processing, and v) investigate mediating mechanisms of attentional bias. Based on these gaps in the literature, five studies were conducted. Study I investigated detection and distraction by emotional stimuli during automatic and strategic processing using the odd-one-out search task and the target search task. Study II investigated engagement and disengagement from emotional stimuli using the attentional assessment task. Study III investigated engagement and disengagement from emotional stimuli using a novel visual probe task, the standard visual probe task, and eye tracking. Study IV investigated detection and distraction by emotional stimuli during automatic and strategic processing using the odd-one-out search task, the target search task, and eye tracking. Study V investigated engagement, disengagement, detection, and distraction by emotional stimuli using a novel visual search task and eye tracking. Study I included 54 non-clinical participants, Studies II-IV included 54 clinical and 54 non-clinical participants, and Study V included 108 non-clinical participants. Studies II and III revealed that the clinical participants showed more attentional avoidance of emotional stimuli than the control participants. Studies I and IV revealed that all participants showed increased distraction by emotional stimuli during automatic processing and increased distraction by threatening stimuli and slower detection of dysphoric stimuli during strategic processing. Study III revealed that emotion regulation mediated the association between attentional avoidance of threat and anxiety, Study V revealed that rumination mediated the association between increased distraction by dysphoria and depression, and both studies revealed that rumination mediated the association between attentional control and depression.