Cited by 114Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentNeural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

From anxious youth to depressed adolescents: Prospective prediction of 2-year depression symptoms via attentional bias measures.

Open access
Price, Rebecca B., Rosen, Dana, Siegle, Greg J., Ladouceur, Cecile D., Tang, Kevin, Allen, Kristy Benoit, Ryan, Neal D., Dahl, Ronald E. +2 more·2016·Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Abstract

Anxious youth are at heightened risk for subsequent development of depression; however, little is known regarding which anxious youth are at the highest prospective risk. Biased attentional patterns (e.g., vigilance and avoidance of negative cues) are implicated as key mechanisms in both anxiety and depression. Aberrant attentional patterns may disrupt opportunities to effectively engage with, and learn from, threatening aspects of the environment during development and/or treatment, compounding risk over time. Sixty-seven anxious youth (ages 9-14; 36 female) completed a dot-probe task to assess baseline attentional patterns provoked by fearful-neutral face pairs. The time course of attentional patterns both during and after threat was assessed via eye-tracking and pupilometry. Self-reported depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed 2 years after the conclusion of a larger psychotherapy treatment trial. Eye-tracking patterns indicating threat avoidance predicted greater 2-year depression scores, over and above baseline and posttreatment symptoms. Sustained, postthreat pupillary avoidance (reflecting preferential neural engagement with the neutral relative to the previously threatening location) predicted additional variance in depression scores, suggesting sustained avoidance in the wake of threat further exacerbated risk. Identical eye-tracking and pupil indices were not predictive of anxiety at 2 years. These biobehavioral markers imply that avoidant attentional processing in the context of anxiety may be a gateway to depression across a key maturational window. Excessive avoidance of threat could interfere with acquisition of adaptive emotion regulation skills during development, culminating in the broad behavioral deactivation that typifies depression. Prevention efforts explicitly targeting avoidant attentional patterns may be warranted.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/abn0000127

Cites

75 of 75 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Price, R. B., Rosen, D., Siegle, G. J., Ladouceur, C. D., Tang, K., Allen, K. B., Ryan, N. D., Dahl, R. E., Forbes, E. E., & Silk, J. S.
Affiliations
  • University of Pittsburgh (US)
  • University of California, Berkeley (US)
Venue
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
Published
2016-02
Volume
125
Issue
2
Pages
267-278
ISSN
  • 0021-843X (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1846
OpenAlex
W2268941256
Cited by
114
References
75
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 5
FWCI
14.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Journal of Abnormal Psychology (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institutes of Health (MH091327, MH080215, MH18269 and MH082998, 1K23MH100259)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
Keywords
anxiety, depression, attentional bias, threat avoidance, dot-probe task, eye tracking, pupillometry, adolescent depression, emotion regulation, depression risk prediction
MeSH terms
Attentional Bias, Adolescent, Anxiety Disorders, Avoidance Learning, Child, Depression, Eye Movements, Fear, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Status Schedule, Prognosis, Psychotherapy, Risk Factors, Biomarkers, Eye Movement Measurements

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review