The Effects Of Social Attention On Attentional Bias:Evidence From FNIRS

Attentional bias refers to a certain processing pattern and rule that an individual shows when allocating attention resources.Cognitive theory of attention holds that biased attention to negative information plays a key and causal role in the development and maintenance of disease.Numerous empirical studies have shown that not only depressed people,but also individuals at risk for depression selectively focus on negative information.This suggests that attentional bias may be a risk factor for depression.Therefore,it is necessary to study attentional bias in healthy subjects,which is conducive to the investigation of the possibility of depression risk in individuals.In addition,it has been found that attentional bias modification technology can effectively improve individuals' attentional bias towards threatening stimuli,but its principle and neural mechanism are still unclear.To this end.this paper uses the improved dot probe paradigm and fNIRS(functional Near Infrared Spectrum)technology to systematically explore the influence of social attention on the attentional bias of individuals' threatening stimuli and its neural mechanism through two studies and three experiments from two levels of behavior and brain mechanism.Research is aimed at young subjects group,consists of two experiments,experiment one examines classical dot probe paradigm of young subjects group(7,a total of 20,male,female 13 people,age 19-25)attentional bias phenomenon about the existence of threatening stimulation,the results showed that the participants under the condition of the consistency of the reaction time significantly less than under the condition of the inconsistency of each response is courtesy of the attention to the threat to stimulate young subjects are bias.Experiment two further manipulation threat stimulus types,it can be divided into dangerous animals and threatening human activities stimulate two kinds,with the improved dot probe paradigm and combined with fNIRS technology to investigate young individuals(8 people,a total of 22,male,female 14 people,age 19-24)of different threat stimulus attentional bias in the brain activation patterns under the influence of the cue,it was found that different subjects under different stimulus type performance,specifically,individuals under the condition of dangerous animals to stimulate the consistency of the reaction time than inconsistency each response is courtesy,There was no difference between the congruent response in the threatening condition and the incongruent response in the incongruent condition,indicating that gaze cues were significantly corrected in the threatening animals' condition,but not in the threatening human activities' condition.In addition,brain imaging study showed that the medial prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex,which are associated with attention control,were significantly activated by individuals under threatening animal stimuli,compared with threatening human stimuli.Experiment 1 and experiment 2 were carried out step by step.Experiment 1 provided evidence for the behavioral research of experiment 2.Experiment 2 further used the non-invasive fNIRS technology with high temporal and spatial resolution to investigate the neural mechanism of the regulation of social attention to attentional bias from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.Study two subjects group focuses on children,by adopting the improved dot probe paradigm to investigate children(a total of 62 people,male 29 people,female 33 people,ages 8 to 11)correction of threatening to stimulate the attention bias and problems,the results found that children under the condition of the consistency of the reaction time than inconsistencies under the condition of each response is courtesy of children did not show to threatening stimuli and consistent attention to youth participants group,but showed the characteristics of attention to avoid.In addition,there was no significant difference in children's responses to consistent or inconsistent gaze cues,both under consistent and inconsistent conditions,indicating that gaze cues did not produce corrective effects.Combined with study 1 and study 2,this paper found that the children and the young subjects had different threatening attentional bias patterns,that is,they had a more intuitive understanding of the dynamic characteristics of attentional bias.In addition,the discussion on the modification mechanism of attention bias in young individuals shows that the effectiveness of modification is different under different stimulus types,and this difference is also reflected in the response of the prefrontal cortex,indicating that the modfication is regulated by the attention control nervous system.