# Emerging relations between attention and negative affect in the first two years of life

> **NIH NIH R01** · PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE · 2020 · $898,378

## Abstract

Project Summary
 The adult and child clinical literature suggests that individuals who are clinically anxious or have high levels
of trait anxiety show attention biases to threat. In addition, when these attention biases are experimentally
manipulated in the lab, researchers can exacerbate or ameliorate levels of anxious thought and behavior. This
has led researchers to argue that attention biases to threat may cause anxiety. However, the degree to which
threat-related attention bias represents a down-stream result of ongoing anxiety or an early-emerging
predisposing factor implicated in the risk for the development of anxiety disorders remains unclear. The studies
highlighting the effectiveness of attention manipulation take a mechanistic view of the relation between
attention and affect and are important proof of concept. However, they cannot elucidate how these
information-processing biases actually develop over the course of childhood. Affect biased attention, the
predisposition to preferentially attend to affective stimuli, may “tune” initial attentional filters to seek out and
identify threat, biasing subsequent information processing and behavioral enactment and serving as a
foundational form of emotion regulation. Anxious adults and children show attention biases to threat, early
temperament is associated with elevated levels of negative affect and anxiety, and normative patterns of
preferential attention to threat are evident as early as the first year of life. However, we know little concerning
how these inter-relations appear and change over time since much of the attention-affect literature (1) has
focused on adult clinically-defined populations, (2) does not systematically assess both constructs across
multiple tasks and contexts, and (3) rarely takes a developmental view that examines core mechanisms as
they emerge in infancy and differentiate between normative patterns and patterns associated with specific risk
factors. The current longitudinal study will employ three eye-tracking tasks that capture core components of
attention in infants assessed at five time-points from 4 to 24 months of age. In addition, we will implement a
rich assessment of temperamental negative affect, which is associated with the later emergence of anxiety and
social withdrawal. Finally, we will assess known biopsychosocial markers of risk that probe neural (EEG), and
parasympathetic (RSA) mechanisms. We will also examine moderating parent-centered mechanisms of
socioemotional development. This line of research reflects the focus in the Research Domain Criteria on
integrating multilevel mechanisms by examining response to potential threat (negative valence systems),
attention patterns (cognitive systems) and early patterns of affect across varying socioemotional contexts
(negative valence systems and social processes). We also go to the heart of NIMH's Objective 2, by
characterizing trajectories of neural and behavioral development in order to identify clin...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9949792
- **Project number:** 5R01MH109692-05
- **Recipient organization:** PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE
- **Principal Investigator:** Kristin A Buss
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $898,378
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-07 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9949792

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9949792, Emerging relations between attention and negative affect in the first two years of life (5R01MH109692-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9949792. Licensed CC0.

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