Cognitive Biases and Psychopathology
There is extensive evidence on the association between attentional biases to threat and emotional vulnerability. We are interested in the role of attentional biases to threat in social anxiety, and we have approached this topic in correlational and experimental studies. For instance, in a recent series of studies, we investigated the effects of a four-week attentional bias modification on subjective, autonomic and endocrine reactivity to social threat. We also focus on genetic influences on attentional malleability and its relations with other cognitive vulnerability factors such as difficulties in emotion regulation. Using methods from experimental psychophysiology, psychoneuroendocrinology and functional neuroimaging, our studies aim to identify biomarkers of anxiety-linked attentional biases and moderators of attentional malleability.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Vălenaș, S., Szentágotai-Tătar, A., Grafton, B., Notebaert, L., Miu, A. C., & MacLeod, C. (2017). Prediction of pre-exam state anxiety from ruminative disposition: The mediating role of impaired attentional disengagement from negative information. Behaviour Research and Therapy 91, 102-110.
Crișan, L. G., Vulturar, R., Miclea, M., & Miu, A. C. (2016). Reactivity to social stress in subclinical social anxiety: Emotional experience, cognitive appraisals, behavior and physiology. Frontiers in Psychiatry 7, 5.
Miu, A. C., Pană, S. E., & Avram, J. (2012). Emotional face processing in neurotypicals with autistic traits: Implications for the broad autism phenotype. Psychiatry Research 198, 489-494.
Avram, J., Balteş, F. R., Miclea, M., & Miu, A. C. (2010). Frontal EEG activation asymmetry reflects cognitive biases in anxiety: evidence from an emotional face Stroop task. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 35(4), 285-92.
