Anxiety symptoms and children's eye gaze during fear learning

Kalina J Michalska; Laura Machlin; Elizabeth Moroney; Daniel S Lowet; John M Hettema; Roxann Roberson-Nay; Bruno B Averbeck; Melissa A Brotman; Eric E Nelson; Ellen Leibenluft; Daniel S Pine

doi:10.1111/jcpp.12749

Anxiety symptoms and children's eye gaze during fear learning

J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2017 Nov;58(11):1276-1286. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12749. Epub 2017 Jul 24.

Authors

Kalina J Michalska^{1

2}, Laura Machlin³, Elizabeth Moroney⁴, Daniel S Lowet⁵, John M Hettema⁶, Roxann Roberson-Nay⁶, Bruno B Averbeck⁷, Melissa A Brotman¹, Eric E Nelson^{1

8

9}, Ellen Leibenluft¹, Daniel S Pine¹

Affiliations

¹ Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
² Department of Psychology, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA.
³ Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁵ Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA.
⁷ Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
⁸ Center for Biobehavioral Health, The Research Institute, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.
⁹ Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.

Abstract

Background: The eye region of the face is particularly relevant for decoding threat-related signals, such as fear. However, it is unclear if gaze patterns to the eyes can be influenced by fear learning. Previous studies examining gaze patterns in adults find an association between anxiety and eye gaze avoidance, although no studies to date examine how associations between anxiety symptoms and eye-viewing patterns manifest in children. The current study examined the effects of learning and trait anxiety on eye gaze using a face-based fear conditioning task developed for use in children.

Methods: Participants were 82 youth from a general population sample of twins (aged 9-13 years), exhibiting a range of anxiety symptoms. Participants underwent a fear conditioning paradigm where the conditioned stimuli (CS+) were two neutral faces, one of which was randomly selected to be paired with an aversive scream. Eye tracking, physiological, and subjective data were acquired. Children and parents reported their child's anxiety using the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders.

Results: Conditioning influenced eye gaze patterns in that children looked longer and more frequently to the eye region of the CS+ than CS- face; this effect was present only during fear acquisition, not at baseline or extinction. Furthermore, consistent with past work in adults, anxiety symptoms were associated with eye gaze avoidance. Finally, gaze duration to the eye region mediated the effect of anxious traits on self-reported fear during acquisition.

Conclusions: Anxiety symptoms in children relate to face-viewing strategies deployed in the context of a fear learning experiment. This relationship may inform attempts to understand the relationship between pediatric anxiety symptoms and learning.

Keywords: Eye gaze; anxiety; conditioning; face processing; psychophysiology.

Publication types

Twin Study

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Anxiety / physiopathology*
Child
Conditioning, Classical / physiology*
Eye Movement Measurements
Eye*
Facial Recognition / physiology*
Fear / physiology*
Female
Fixation, Ocular / physiology*
Humans
Male

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding