About
Threat: “something unpleasant or dangerous that might happen, especially if a particular action is not taken...”
Reward: “the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces appetitive behavior, also known as approach behavior...”
Our clinical experience shows that compared with healthy individuals patients with different psychopathologies show increased fear-related processes as well as aberrant reward functioning, leading to depression, anxiety and maladjusted counterproductive behaviors. The overarching goal of the Threat and Reward in Psychopathology Lab is to explore these processes from an attentional perspective.
Our research explores differences between various psychopathologies and healthy individuals focusing on two main research domains:
(1) Attention Allocation: The way in which
different cues in our environment receive our
attentional resources (i.e., attentional priority).
(2) Selection History: The effects of prior experiences
on subsequent attention allocation. Our focus is on
how attention is affected by reward/threat (history)
as well as other types of history effects.
In accordance, example projects in the lab include:
(1) Attention Allocation:
a. Examining the link between depressive
tendencies and the way people allocate their
attention while using an Internet news site.
b. Examining differences in gaze patterns to social
and non-social stimuli between socially anxious
and non-anxious individuals while using social
networking sites, such as Facebook.
c. Examining attention processes to different
negatively-valenced cues in PTSD patients,
trauma-exposed healthy controls, and healthy
controls.
(2) Selection History:
a. Examining the association between visual
attention patterns following reward learning
and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
b. Examining the association between depressive
tendencies and the ability to learn through
musical feedback (i.e., reward). Namely, learning
to modify attention allocation.
c. Examining the clinical efficacy of a novel gaze-
contingent music reward therapy designed to
reduce attention allocation to threats, in a variety
of psychopathological disorders.