TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessing anxiety-linked impairment in attentional control without eye-tracking
T2 - The masked-target antisaccade task
AU - Basanovic, Julian
AU - Todd, Jemma
AU - van Bockstaele, Bram
AU - Notebaert, Lies
AU - Meeten, Frances
AU - Clarke, Patrick J.F.
N1 - Funding Information:
The research reported in this manuscript is a product of the Cognition Emotion Research Collaboration Initiative (CERCI). Code scripts relating to the study reported in the manuscript are available at: https://www.osf.io/mc7zg/
Funding Information:
Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. The research reported in this manuscript was supported in part by the Australian Research Council (Grant #: FL170100167).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/1
Y1 - 2023/1
N2 - Contemporary cognitive theories of anxiety and attention processing propose that heightened levels of anxiety vulnerability are associated with a decreasing ability to inhibit the allocation of attention towards task-irrelevant information. Existing performance-based research has most often used eye-movement assessment variants of the antisaccade paradigm to demonstrate such effects. Critically, however, eye-movement assessment methods are limited by expense, the need for expert training in administration, and limited mobility and scalability. These barriers have likely led to researchers’ use of suboptimal methods of assessing the relationship between attentional control and anxiety vulnerability. The present study examined the capacity for a non-eye-movement-based variant of the antisaccade task, the masked-target antisaccade task (Guitton et al., 1985), to detect anxiety-linked differences in attentional control. Participants (N = 342) completed an assessment of anxiety vulnerability and performed the masked-target antisaccade task in an online assessment session. Greater levels of anxiety vulnerability predicted poorer performance on the task, consistent with findings observed from eye-movement methods and with cognitive theories of anxiety and attention processing. Results also revealed the task to have high internal reliability. Our findings indicate that the masked-target antisaccade task provides a psychometrically reliable, low-cost, mobile, and scalable assessment of anxiety-linked differences in attentional control.
AB - Contemporary cognitive theories of anxiety and attention processing propose that heightened levels of anxiety vulnerability are associated with a decreasing ability to inhibit the allocation of attention towards task-irrelevant information. Existing performance-based research has most often used eye-movement assessment variants of the antisaccade paradigm to demonstrate such effects. Critically, however, eye-movement assessment methods are limited by expense, the need for expert training in administration, and limited mobility and scalability. These barriers have likely led to researchers’ use of suboptimal methods of assessing the relationship between attentional control and anxiety vulnerability. The present study examined the capacity for a non-eye-movement-based variant of the antisaccade task, the masked-target antisaccade task (Guitton et al., 1985), to detect anxiety-linked differences in attentional control. Participants (N = 342) completed an assessment of anxiety vulnerability and performed the masked-target antisaccade task in an online assessment session. Greater levels of anxiety vulnerability predicted poorer performance on the task, consistent with findings observed from eye-movement methods and with cognitive theories of anxiety and attention processing. Results also revealed the task to have high internal reliability. Our findings indicate that the masked-target antisaccade task provides a psychometrically reliable, low-cost, mobile, and scalable assessment of anxiety-linked differences in attentional control.
KW - Antisaccade
KW - Anxiety
KW - Attentional control
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126308387&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3758/s13428-022-01800-z
DO - 10.3758/s13428-022-01800-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 35292933
AN - SCOPUS:85126308387
SN - 1554-351X
VL - 55
SP - 135
EP - 142
JO - Behavior research methods
JF - Behavior research methods
IS - 1
ER -