The effects of target and distractor familiarity on visual search in anxious children: Latent inhibition and novel pop-out

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. All rights reserved.