Browsing by Author "Zerrouk, Mohamed"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- Attention Bias in Middle Childhood: The Impact of Effortful Control and TemperamentZerrouk, Mohamed (Virginia Tech, 2021-05)Identifying whether a stimulus is threatening or not is critical for staying safe. The faster one can detect a threat, the greater chance there is to avoid any potential danger. Factors contributing to the visual attention of threat are therefore informative. Previous research has examined how aspects of temperament and effortful control interact and affect the attention allocated to threats, especially in clinically anxious populations. However, there is a sparsity of this literature existing for nonclinical populations. My study addressed previous gaps by examining whether negative affect and fear impact an attention bias to threat in children aged 6 through 8 while assessing how attentional control and inhibitory control moderate these relations. A modified visual search task with snakes as the threat was given to the participants after the children’s parents completed questionnaires and the children completed an attentional control task. Results showed that an attentional bias to snakes was seen in the sample. Negative affect as a main effect nor as an interaction effect with attentional control predicted for the attention bias to snakes. Fear predicted for the attention bias to snakes as a main effect. Interestingly, inhibitory control moderated the relation between fear and the attention bias to snakes. Only children with high inhibitory control and high fear predicted for the attention bias to snakes. Findings may indicate children with this temperament are more vulnerable to the onset of anxiety.
- The Role of Test Anxiety in Attention Bias to Test Threats in Undergraduates: The Influences of Temperamental Effortful Control and Frontal EEG AsymmetryZerrouk, Mohamed (Virginia Tech, 2024-08-13)Test anxiety is a prevalent stressor which negatively impacts academic performance in evaluative situations. Previous literature has shown that attention biases (AB) to threats are implicated with general anxiety. However, few studies have examined the effect between AB to relevant threats (i.e., testing threats) and test anxiety. This study addressed previous gaps by examining whether temperamental effortful control and frontal EEG asymmetry (FA) impacted the relation between an exogenous AB to test threats and test anxiety in undergraduate students. A dot-probe task with test threat words as the target was given to the students. Paired-sample T tests show the presence of an AB to test threats in the endogenous (i.e., 500ms) condition but not in the exogenous (i.e., 250ms) condition. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that right FA modulated the positive relation between AB to test threats with test anxiety and positive relation between test anxiety with AB to test threats. Attentional control negatively predicted test anxiety but not the AB to test threats. AC and IC did not significantly interact with either test anxiety or AB to test threats in predicting the other (i.e., test anxiety predicting AB to test threats and vice-versa). A four-way interaction indicated that greater test anxiety predicts a stronger AB to test threats for those with right FA, low AC, and high IC. This four-way interaction result was conservatively considered due to the risk of overfitting. Results suggest the need to include FA in future studies of AB to test threats.