The goals of this project are to evaluate risk factors for anxiety disorders. This proposal is a cross-sectional high-risk (HR) design, comparing children with anxiety disorders (AD) to non-disordered children who are at high-risk (HR) based on parental anxiety disorders and non-disordered children at low risk (LR) for anxiety disorders based on the absence of parental psychopathology. Markers of risk for anxiety disorders are hypothesized to include evaluated sympathetic state, lowered vagal tone, selectivity of attention, evaluated reactivity to aversive stimuli, and stronger learning and retention of aversive associations. Thus, the three groups of participants (N=80), aged 7-12 years (pre-pubertal) and matched on gender, will be evaluated in terms of resting sympathetic state and vagal tone, attention to negative facial expressions, startle blink and cardiac reactivity to high decibel tones, with potentiation by """"""""lights off"""""""", and rates of acquiring aversive conditioned responses to novel geometric figures paired with airpuffs. In addition, replication of startle and selective attention to facial expressions as well as measurement of recovery of aversive associations will be assessed one week later. Conditioning will be measured in terms of autonomic responses as well as eye gaze movement, and selectivity of attention will be measured using eye gaze. Measurement of eye gaze in youths to gauge ongoing conditioning and attentional processes represents a new methodology.
| Waters, Allison M; Craske, Michelle G; Bergman, R Lindsey et al. (2008) Threat interpretation bias as a vulnerability factor in childhood anxiety disorders. Behav Res Ther 46:39-47 |
| Waters, Allison M; Craske, Michelle G; Bergman, R Lindsey et al. (2008) Developmental changes in startle reactivity in school-age children at risk for and with actual anxiety disorder. Int J Psychophysiol 70:158-64 |
