Attentional Bias In High Anxiety Sensitivity Military Personnel And Modification

As the life stress increases,anxiety disorders have gradually become one of the global mental diseases.Due to special military environment,soldiers are more susceptible to anxiety disorders.Therefore,screening anxiety-susceptible people,carrying out active psychological intervention,and reducing the occurrence and development of anxiety disorders are of great significance to the stability of the troops and the maintenance of the military operational effectiveness.At present,this field has become one of the hot spots and difficulties in military psychology at home and abroad.Cognitive theory suggests that individuals with anxiety disorders have a bias towards threat information,which in turn increases individual's anxiety and anxiety disorder susceptibility.Therefore,it is an important breakthrough to explore the individual's attention bias and modification in anxiety-susceptible individuals.In the present study,Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3(ASI-3),one of the latest international measurement tools to assess anxiety disorders susceptibility,was used in a large sample survey to amend the Chinese military anxiety sensitivity norm.Structural equation modeling techniques was used to explore the effect of anxiety sensitivity,social support and resilience on the military acute stress response.The eStroop task and dot probe task were used to compare the attentional bias characteristics in high and low anxiety sensitivity military personnel.Besides,the Event-Related Potentials and eye tracking technologies were used to explore the electrophysiological mechanism of attentional bias.One week's modified dot probe task was used in high anxiety individuals to explore the effective of attentional bias modification on attentional bias,subjective anxiety and physiological stress sensitivity.Based on the above researches,the main results are as followed:1.The ASI-3 Chinese military norm met the requirements of psychometrics: The threedimensional model of anxiety sensitivity(physical concerns,social concerns and cognitive concerns)fitted well with high structural validity.The scale was positively correlated with anxiety subscale of Depression Anxiety Stress Scales,which suggested a high criterion validity.The ROC curve showed that when the critical value of ASI-3 is taken as 16,the sum of sensitivity and specificity was the largest.2.The survey revealed that the male,the only child,air force and officers had higher anxiety sensitivity scores than other military personnel,and they tended to feel more anxious and worried about the negative consequences of anxiety in the same military context.In addition,anxiety sensitivity(AS)could predict military acute stress response through social support and psychological resilience.In the absence of social support,high AS military personnel tended to have less resilience and more physical and psychological stress reactions.3.In the eStroop task,high AS individuals had significantly longer reaction time in negative block than positive block,while low AS individuals had not.That's to say,high AS individuals were disturbed by emotional information,which affected the color judgment of the words,appearing a Stroop effect.A frontocentral negativity(250-400 ms,AN380)was induced by negative stimulus in high AS individuals.4.In dot probe task,both high and low anxiety sensitive military personnel had no attentional engagement bias towards negative stimulus,but high AS individuals had difficulty in distracting attention from negative stimulus,while low AS individuals had not.Eye tracking data suggested that there was no significant difference in Time to first fixation bias or First fixation duration between two groups,namely,high and low AS individuals had similar orientation speed,attention vigilance and original avoidance towards negative pictures.However,there was a significant difference between the two groups in Total fixation duration bias and Fixation count bias,indicating that high AS individuals had more attention maintaining and attention orientation to negative information than low AS individuals.5.One-week modified dot probe task training could effectively improve high AS individuals' attentional bias to negative information in the eStroop task.And the visual analogue scale and saliva amylase reactivity decreased significantly in training group.Based on the above results,we can draw the following conclusions:1.Chinese ASI-3 military norm has a high reliability and validity and meets the psychometric standards.2.The male,only child,air force and military officer have higher AS than other military personnel.Anxiety sensitivity influences the military acute stress response through social support and resilience.3.There are significant difference in attentional bias toward emotional information between high and low AS individuals.High AS participants had more attention maintaining and attention orientation to negative information than low AS participants.And one frontocentral negativity(250-400 ms,AN380)was induced by negative words in high AS individuals.4.One-week attentional bias training can effectively reduce the high AS individuals' attentional bias,subjective anxiety and physiological stress sensitivity.