An examination of hypervigilance for external threat in individuals with generalized anxiety disorder and individuals with persecutory delusions using visual scan paths

One account of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is that it results from h ypervigilance, manifest as excessive scanning of the external environment a nd preferential attention to threat. However, for individuals with GAD, the re has been no direct study of scanning, and evidence for preferential atte ntion to threat has only been found for threat-words. We therefore devised a new measure of hypervigilance. Visual scan paths were recorded of individ uals with GAD (N = 12) and people without a psychiatric illness (N = 12) vi ewing complex pictures that varied in threat content. People with persecuto ry beliefs (N = 11) also participated in the study to test the hypothesis t hat anxiety via such hypervigilant cognitive processes, may contribute to t he maintenance of delusions. Compared with the control group, the anxious i ndividuals were not found either to scan excessively for or to look at thre at. The anxiety group was therefore not hypervigilant for external threat, which is inconsistent with the hypervigilance model. As a consequence, the hypothesis that anxiety maintains delusions was nor tested. However, additi onal support was found for the hypothesis that people with delusions form r apid judgements on the basis of less data-gathering than control groups who are either anxious or have no psychiatric illness.