The free-viewing matrix task: A reliable measure of attention allocation in psychopathology.

Aberrant attention allocation has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of a range of psychopathologies. However, three decades of research, relying primarily on manual response-time tasks, have been challenged on the grounds of poor reliability of its attention bias indices. Here, in a large, multisite, international study we provide reliability information for a new eye-tracking-based measure of attention allocation and its relation to psychopathology and age. Data from 1567 participants, across a wide range of psychiatric diagnoses and ages, were aggregated from nine sites around the world. Of these, 213 participants also provided retest data. Acceptable overall internal consistency and test-retest reliability were observed among adult participants (Cronbach's alpha = 0.86 and r(213) = 0.89, respectively), as well as across all examined psychopathologies. Youth demonstrated lower internal consistency scores (Cronbach's alpha = 0.65). Finally, the percent dwell time index derived from the task statistically differentiated between healthy participants and participants diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, major depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These results potentially address a long-standing reliability crisis in this research field. Aberrant attention allocation patterns in a variety of psychiatric disorders may be targeted with the hope of affecting symptoms. The attention allocation index derived from the matrix task offers reliable means to measure such cognitive target engagement in clinical contexts.

Social Distancing During A COVID-19 Lockdown Contributes to The Maintenance of Social Anxiety: A Natural Experiment.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to extensive social distancing measures. For those suffering from social anxiety, social distancing coincides with a tendency to avoid social interactions. We used this natural experiment imposed by a COVID-19 lockdown to examine how mandated low social exposure influenced socially anxious university students, and compared their anxiety to that of socially anxious students in preceding academic years with no social distancing. METHODS: Ninety-nine socially anxious students were assessed for social anxiety symptoms at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. Students from the 2019-2020 academic year (which included a lockdown followed by social distancing measures at the end of the fall semester) were compared to students from preceding years (2016-2019) on social anxiety levels. RESULTS: Whereas social anxiety decreased in socially anxious students from the fall to the spring semester in the years preceding the pandemic, during the 2019-2020 academic year social anxiety levels remained high and unchanged. These results held when controlling for depressive symptoms and when analyzing social anxiety items that cannot be confounded with COVID-19-related anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: The current results suggest that reduced exposure to social situations may play a role in the maintenance of social anxiety. Alternative explanations are discussed.

A randomized controlled trial of gaze-contingent music reward therapy for major depressive disorder.

BACKGROUND: Heightened attention allocation toward negative-valanced information and reduced attention allocation toward positive-valanced information represent viable targets for attention bias modification in major depressive disorder. Accordingly, we conducted a randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of a novel gaze-contingent attention bias modification procedure for major depressive disorder. METHOD: Sixty patients with major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to either eight training sessions of feedback-based gaze-contingent music reward therapy designed to divert patients' gaze toward positive over sad stimuli, or to a control condition which entailed eight sessions of gaze-noncontingent music. Clinician-rated and self-reported measures of depression, and proportion of dwell-time on sad faces, were assessed pretreatment, posttreatment, and at a 3-month follow-up. RESULTS: Gaze-contingent music reward therapy produced a greater reduction in dwell-time on sad faces compared with the control condition, but it failed to generalize to novel faces. Both groups manifested similarly significant reductions in depression symptoms from pre- to posttreatment that were maintained at follow-up. Exploratory analyses suggest that first-episode patients may benefit more from this therapy than patients with a history of multiple episodes. CONCLUSIONS: Gaze-contingent music reward therapy can modify attention biases in depression, but clear differential clinical effects did not emerge. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.