Threat Learning Difficulties in Adolescents with Anxiety Problems: Investigating their Nature and Neural Bases
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Experimental Psychology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Cohen Kadosh K
(2013)
Plasticity during childhood and adolescence: innovative approaches to investigating neurocognitive development.
in Developmental science
Cohen Kadosh K
(2014)
Age-related changes in attentional control across adolescence: how does this impact emotion regulation capacities?
in Frontiers in psychology
Cohen Kadosh K
(2015)
High trait anxiety during adolescence interferes with discriminatory context learning.
in Neurobiology of learning and memory
Haller SPW
(2018)
Group decision-making is optimal in adolescence.
in Scientific reports
Heathcote LC
(2016)
Negative Interpretation Bias and the Experience of Pain in Adolescents.
in The journal of pain
Kadosh KC
(2018)
Subclinically Anxious Adolescents Do Not Display Attention Biases When Processing Emotional Faces - An Eye-Tracking Study.
in Frontiers in psychology
Kathrin Cohen Kadosh (Speaker)
Attentional biases for fearful faces in mid-childhood
in Mental Health throughout Life
Kathrin Cohen Kadosh (Speaker)
Trait anxiety levels modulate threat-learning during adolescence
in Fifth European Meeting on Human Fear Conditioning
Kathrin Cohen Kadosh (Speaker)
Face processing in childhood and adolescence
| Description | We have conducted 6 studies investigating the role and plasticity of biased threat processing in anxiety problems during development. Our research questions and findings can be grouped under three themes: 1. How difficulties in attention and learning during emotional contexts differentiates low-anxious from high-anxious individuals. Previous studies of anxious adults show that anxiety is characterised by an initial vigilance for threatening cues (where they turn their attention towards threatening cues), followed by avoidance (turning their attention away). There is some evidence that these attentional patterns may facilitate, among anxious adults, enhanced learning of what predicts these threatening outcomes. In three of our studies, we extend these findings to anxious adolescents. First, we show that compared to their non-anxious peers, anxious adolescents are poorer at threat-learning, struggling to discriminate whether it is the relevant background or specific cue that predicts a threatening outcome (study 2, manuscript under review). We show that difficulties in threat-learning may characterise girls more than boys, tentatively explaining why females show greater risk for anxiety problems (study 3, manuscript in preparation). In study 1 (published), we show that anxious adolescents are more avoidant of threatening cues. Putting these data together may suggest that attentional patterns of avoidance disrupt relevant learning of threat cues and threat outcomes. 2. How fear responses to threat and safety signals can be dampened down in adolescents by teaching individuals how to re-appraise stimuli that are emotionally-ambiguous: Our previous work has shown that one of the associated features of poor threat-learning is that anxious adolescents generalise their fear of the threatening stimulus to a safe stimulus. To make matters worse, our previous work has also shown that anxious adolescents find it difficult to use more sophisticated appraisal strategies to regulate their emotions. In Study 4, we investigated whether a simple cognitive training script could teach adolescents how to re-interpret a stimulus or situation that seemed threatening but in actuality was safe, in a benign (non-threatening) way. We compared adolescents who had been assigned to the cognitive intervention to a control condition where adolescents were simply exposed to the threatening/safe stimuli over and over again in the absence of a threatening outcome. Our simple intervention significantly improved self-reported anxiety to the threatening and safe cues - compared to the control condition. 3. How difficulties in the appraisal of stimuli to regulate emotions may be transmitted from mothers to their children: Our fifth study (currently being analysed) is investigating whether difficulties in re-appraising threatening/safe stimuli characterises pregnant women who are anxious - and whether this is a stable trait that affects the early psychosocial environment of their newborn infants. While the present ESRC grant has only funded three waves of data collection from the mothers (second trimester, third trimester, 1 month following birth), we intend to seek further funding for the follow-up of these babies - to investigate whether mother's appraisal style predicts threat-learning difficulties in infants. 4. How attention capture by painful stimuli may characterise adolescents with high levels of pain catastrophising and low levels of attention control. This paper has now been published in Pain. |
| Exploitation Route | Our findings have increased the knowledge base on why some adolescents are more anxious than others, focusing particularly on the way that they attend to, learn from, and appraise threatening information. This knowledge will shape the development of novel interventions for targeting adolescent anxiety, and drive research into investigating the early origins of these threat-processing difficulties. More specifically, we have developed and piloted a cognitive script for enhancing the use of reappraisal strategies to inhibit fear towards threatening and safety cues. This cognitive script needs to be investigated further in clinically anxious adolescents. |
| Sectors | Education,Healthcare |
| Description | Our findings have informed a basic science understanding of adolescent anxiety. Specifically, our findings showing that adolescents with anxiety show certain difficulties with learning and attending to threatening information can help to inform the development of new cognitive interventions. We have piloted one such possible intervention as part of the ESRC grant. However as this is just pilot data, it has not yet been applied more generally - which would be the next step. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2015 |
| Sector | Healthcare |
| Impact Types | Societal |
| Description | Action Medical Training Fellowship |
| Amount | £141,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | GN2122 |
| Organisation | Action Medical Research |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2013 |
| End | 10/2016 |
| Description | European Commisson: The 7th Framework Programme |
| Amount | € 265,059 (EUR) |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 11/2013 |
| End | 11/2017 |
| Title | Attention capture in children and adolescents |
| Description | This dataset investigates whether attention capture by emotional stimuli varies as a function of developmental age and trait anxiety levels |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | We have published these data in a scientific journal |
| Description | Attention biases in anxiety: methodological innovations and clinical implications |
| Organisation | National Institutes of Health (NIH) |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Our team are currently convening a consortium of researchers working in the area of attention biases and anxiety; this will enable us to discuss the most effective assessment and intervention tools around attention biases in relation to anxiety problems in community and clinic samples, but also in samples who have experienced early-life adversity. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We have initiated links with leading experts in this area to convene a 3-day closed expert meeting on the study of attention biases in anxiety. After three more meetings, this consortium has gone on to form the Association for Cognitive Bias Modification with paid membership and elected officers (president, treasurer, secretary etc). I am the elected Secretary of this Association. |
| Impact | Our first meeting will be in September 2017. Our first open meeting is planned for February 2022. Our second annual meeting which will be in person is this May (2023) held at the National Institute of Mental Health (US). Loneliness data from this grant will be presented there. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | BRAINTRAIN |
| Organisation | Cardiff University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | As part of our ESRC grant, we published a joint article on neurocognitive plasticity in adolescents and how adolescents with anxiety may be amenable to external interventions. This then led to a joint funding initiative which led to a successful grant to the European Commission. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We led the writing of the article. |
| Impact | Plasticity during childhood and adolescence: innovative approaches to investigating neurocognitive development Cohen Kadosh, K., Linden, D. E. J. & Lau, J. Y. F. Jul 2013 In : Developmental Science. 16, 4, p. 574-583 N/A |
| Start Year | 2012 |
| Description | Sharing research protocol with Haifa University researcher |
| Organisation | University of Haifa |
| Country | Israel |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have shared our research protocol with collaborator at Haifa University to run a similar study in her clinic in Israel, targeting both maltreated Arab and Jewish young people. We have successfully applied for the Daniel Turnberg Fellowship Scheme 2017 for her to visit the UK to work together on the data. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We have helped to shape the research protocol used by our collaborator; we have also shared our tasks and programs. |
| Impact | Successful application to the Daniel Turnberg Fellowship Scheme 2017 |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Conference on Psychology for sixth form students at a school (Oxford) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Talks sparked an interest in neuroscience and psychology among young people; we discussed issues relating to mental well-being in young people and also pursuing science as a degree course in tertiary education After my talk, the school asked if their pupils could visit our lab, and also reported more interest in psychology/neuroscience as a subject for further study at University |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |