Influence of anxiety, depression and looming cognitive style on auditory looming perception

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Highlights

  • Our study linked anxiety and cognitive style to auditory looming perception.

  • Auditory looming cues are an ecologically fundamental auditory warning signal.

  • Individuals tend to overestimate the approach of a looming sound source.

  • We assessed the anticipatory auditory looming bias in 91 college students.

  • Ours is the first study to link anxiety to anticipatory auditory looming bias.

  • Anxiety and looming cognitive style predicted anticipatory auditory looming bias.

Abstract

Previous studies show that individuals with an anticipatory auditory looming bias over-estimate the closeness of a sound source that approaches them. Our present study bridges cognitive clinical and perception research, and provides evidence that anxiety symptoms and a particular putative cognitive style that creates vulnerability for anxiety (looming cognitive style, or LCS) are related to how people perceive this ecologically fundamental auditory warning signal. The effects of anxiety symptoms on the anticipatory auditory looming effect synergistically depend on the dimension of perceived personal danger assessed by the LCS (physical or social threat). Depression symptoms, in contrast to anxiety symptoms, predict a diminution of the auditory looming bias. Findings broaden our understanding of the links between cognitive-affective states and auditory perception processes and lend further support to past studies providing evidence that the looming cognitive style is related to bias in threat processing.

Section snippets

Looming cognitive style and the processing of warning signals

A “looming vulnerability” model advanced by Riskind states that anxiety is associated with a cognitive bias to exaggerate forward threat movement (Riskind, 1997, Riskind et al., 2012). The model posits that a key function served by threat processing (in both human and nonhuman animals) is to serve the need to rapidly detect and respond to early warning signals. The model posits the looming cognitive style (LCS) as a faulty cognitive bias that exaggerates this tendency (Riskind, Williams,

Effects of anxiety and looming cognitive style and auditory looming

Based on theoretical logic, we expected that the nature of the perceived vulnerability (or LCS dimension) would moderate the impact of anxiety on the anticipatory auditory looming bias. On the one hand, a person who has the looming cognitive style for physical threats is primed to anticipate (and be vigilant for) rapidly approaching physical dangers, and higher levels of anxiety will predict a stronger anticipatory auditory looming bias. A person who has a low level of the looming cognitive

Present study

The present study was designed to examine our predictions that anxiety symptoms will interact differently with each LCS dimension of personal danger in the prediction of the anticipatory auditory looming bias. A secondary aim was to test the specificity of the predicted effects to anxiety symptoms by comparing them to depression symptoms. Even though anxiety and depression are highly inter-correlated (Brown et al., 1998, Clark and Watson, 1991), they are assumed to have different adaptive

Participants

One hundred undergraduates (72% female) at a suburban university participated in the IRB-approved study for course credit. Participant age ranged from 18 to 51 years (M = 21.32, SD = 4.68).1 Inclusion criteria included fluency in spoken and written English. Racial composition of the sample was relatively diverse: 59% Caucasian, 24% Asian, 10% African American, 1% Pacific Islander, and 6% identified as other. Measures of

Results

Table 1 presents the means, SDs, and intercorrelations of the study variables. As can be seen from the table, anxiety symptoms were significantly correlated with depression symptoms, and both LMSQ subscales. Depression symptoms were also correlated with both LMSQ subscales and the LMSQ subscales were correlated with each other. Anticipatory bias for auditory looming had a nonsignificant tendency to correlate with anxiety symptoms. No gender effects were found for anxiety or depression symptoms

Discussion

Although it has been shown that individuals over-estimate the closeness of a sound source that approaches (Bach et al., 2009, Bach et al., 2008, Neuhoff, 2001), the present study demonstrates the impact of anxiety and depression symptoms and cognitive biases (i.e., looming cognitive style; LCS) on the perception of these ecologically fundamental warning signals. We expected that anxiety symptoms and LCS dimensions synergistically combine to predict anticipatory auditory looming. In addition, we

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