College of Education
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Item Social Influences of Error Monitoring(2016) Barker, Tyson Vern; Fox, Nathan A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Adolescence is characterized by dramatic hormonal, physical, and psychological changes, and is a period of risk for affective and anxiety disorders. Pubertal development during adolescence plays a major role in the emergence of these disorders, particularly among girls. Thus, it is critical to identify early biomarkers of risk. One potential biomarker, the error-related negativity (ERN), is an event-related potential following an erroneous response. Individuals with an anxiety disorder demonstrate a greater ERN than healthy comparisons, an association which is stronger in adolescence, suggesting that pubertal development may play a role in the ERN as a predictor of anxiety. One form of anxiety often observed in adolescence, particularly among girls, is social anxiety, which is defined as anxiety elicited by social-evaluative contexts. In adults, enhancements of the ERN in social-evaluative contexts is positively related to social anxiety symptoms, suggesting that the ERN in social contexts may serve as a biomarker for social anxiety. This dissertation examined the ERN in and its relation with puberty and social anxiety among 76 adolescent girls. Adolescent girls completed a flanker task in two differentItem INTERPRETIVE BIAS AND ANXIETY VULNERABILITY IN BEHAVIORALLY INHIBITED CHILDREN: DISAMBIGUATING THE COGNITIVE AND EMOTIONAL EFFECTS ASSOCIATED WITH INTERPRETIVE BIAS ACQUISITION(2013) White, Lauren K.; Fox, Nathan A.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperament characterized by a fear of novel and unfamiliar people and situations, is associated with increased risk for anxiety problems throughout life. One mechanism thought to moderate the link between BI and anxiety is a child's interpretive bias (i.e., the manner in which emotional ambiguity is interpreted). Behaviorally inhibited children who consistently interpret ambiguous information in a threatening manner are thought to be at increased risk for anxiety. Conversely, behaviorally inhibited children who consistently interpret ambiguity as benign or non-threatening may be protected from such risk. Little research, however, has experimentally examined interpretive biases in behaviorally inhibited children. This dissertation investigates the causal relations between interpretive biases and anxiety vulnerability in behaviorally inhibited children. To examine if changes in interpretive biases affect anxiety vulnerability, a cognitive bias modification procedure was employed to induce a non-threatening interpretive bias in a group of 9-12 year old behaviorally inhibited children. After training, children were assessed on their mood, emotional vulnerability to stress, and attention bias toward threat in order to determine if bias modification affected anxiety vulnerability. The findings of this study demonstrate that the cognitive bias manipulation was successful; behaviorally inhibited children displayed decreased threat interpretations after training. No training effects on anxiety vulnerability were detected. As a result, the notion that interpretive biases are causally linked to a child's anxiety vulnerability is not supported by the findings of this study. The implications of these findings are discussed in this dissertation.