Re. Lubow et al., The effects of target and distractor familiarity on visual search in anxious children: Latent inhibition and novel pop-out, J ANXIETY D, 14(1), 2000, pp. 41-56
Children and adolescents (ages 6-17 years) diagnosed as having an anxiety d
isorder were compared to matched controls on a two-stage serial visual sear
ch task in which they identified presence or absence of a unique shape pres
ented with homogeneous distracters. Response time was examined as a functio
n of prior experience with either target, distracter, or both, allowing for
a within-subject assessment of latent inhibition (LI: slower responding to
a target that was formerly a distracter against a background of distracter
s that were formerly targets as compared to a novel target with distractors
that were formerly targets) and novel pop-out effects (NPO: faster respond
ing to a novel target against a background of familiar former targets as co
mpared to the condition in which both the target and distracters were novel
). There were robust LI and NPO effects for both anxious and control childr
en. However, the predicted interaction between diagnosis and LI condition w
as not obtained. In general, the results suggest that children with diagnos
ed anxiety disorder do not differ from controls on basic information proces
sing as assessed by this visual search task. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.
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