Negative and positive attention bias in anhedonia and anxious arousal: Can depression and anxiety be distinguished by patterns of engagement and disengagement bias?

Negative and positive attention bias (AB) is the preferential allocation of attentional resources to negative and positive stimuli in the environment, respectively. AB has been studied in various clinical and non-clinical populations and the process has been linked to symptoms of depression and anxiety. Findings so far suggest that negative AB is a trait-based factor that predisposes individuals to anxiety and depression. Positive AB appears specific to a depressed state, yet findings generally remain mixed. Measures of AB have been recently critiqued for their poor psychometric properties. This study addresses three gaps in the literature to further our understanding of the relationship between AB and psychopathology. The aims of this study were to determine whether 1) the core symptoms of depression (anhedonia) and anxiety (anxious arousal) are related to differential patterns of negative and positive AB, 2) anhedonia and anxious arousal have incremental utility in predicting AB over and above negative affectivity, 3) AB predicts group membership (clinical vs non-clinical). Results from random effects analysis showed that inter-subject variability was significant. Fixed effects analyses showed that the present study failed to capture positive and negative AB. Between group differences in raw response times were observed. Implications of the findings with regards to methodological differences across studies are discussed.