Attention Bias to Threat in Anxiety-Prone Individuals

Abstract

There is considerable controversy around the factors influencing the attentional biases involved in anxiety, controversies pinpointing to the role of trait anxiety (TA) in these biases. Previous studies have disregarded psychophysiological factors, such as cardiac vagal control, from the relation between TA and attention biases to threat, though cardiac vagal control serves as a proxy of attention regulation. By using a spatial cueing task, the present correlational study examines cardiac vagal tone as a moderator of the relation between TA and attention biases to threat. Cardiac vagal tone was indexed by high-frequency heart-rate variability (HF-HRV) and recorded, at baseline, from participants with high trait anxiety (HTA, N = 34) or low trait anxiety (LTA, N = 40). Our data indicate that HF-HRV significantly moderates the relation between TA and disengagement bias, but does not moderate the relation between TA and engagement bias. Extended analysis on the significant moderation showed that HF-HRV moderated the relation between TA and disengagement bias in the case of the participants with mean to low HF-HRV values. This was not the case for the participants with high values of HF-HRV. Our results suggest implications for redefining groups at risk for anxiety disorders, as well as future considerations of the cardiac vagal tone in attention bias research.