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228 EFFECTS OF STRESSAttention, Emotion, and Adolescent Anxiety DisordersPerhaps the most extensively explored psychological processes that are relevantto adolescent anxiety involve interactions between emotions and attention allocation/control.This chapter therefore uses research on attention and emotion toexemplify one way in which neuroscience and clinical developmental approachescan be integrated. This focused review is designed to provide a template for futurework examining relationships among behavior, brain activity, and a varietyof information processing functions.Considerable research in the basic and cognitive neurosciences delineates neuralcircuits involved in attention, or the prioritizing of stimulus features for elaborativeprocessing (Kastner & Ungerleider, 2000). Emotional processes play importantroles in such prioritization, and considerable work focuses specifically onassociations between environmental threats and attention (Vuilleumier, 2005).From the clinical and developmental perspectives, a growing body of work delineatesboth behavioral and neural correlates of interactions between threat contentand attention regulation. In the present chapter, we focus in detail on attention tocues of social threat in the context of anxiety.Attention to Social/Emotional Cuesand Adolescent Anxiety DisordersIn the course of a single social interaction, individuals confront a vast array ofstimuli, often many at once. It is necessary to engage cognitive and neural processesthat constitute “attention” to determine which stimuli merit immediate processing—particularlythose with either salient rewarding or punitive properties—and which can be ignored or processed later. The term “attention” refers to theresult of interactions among neural mechanisms that work to resolve competitionamong environmental stimuli for processing and prioritize those that warrant responses(Desimone & Duncan, 1995).Studies of rodents and nonhuman primates have led to the development of precisemodels of the neural circuitry that participates in this complex prioritizationprocess (Davis & Whalen, 2001). Subsumed under the general rubric of “prioritization”are a wide range of simpler processes, which include those related to shiftsor maintenance in the orientation of attention, maintenance of arousal or an alertstate, and the control of information processing resources to maximize goal attainment.Research on each of these processes demonstrates clearly that attentionrelatedcircuits encompass many of the structures in the SIPN, including theamygdala and regions of the PFC (Davis & Whalen, 2001; Miller & Cohen, 2001).Moreover, both a large body of research on rodents and an emerging literature onnonhuman primates suggest that social stressors that occur early in developmentcan precipitate anxiety-relevant changes in the functioning of structures withinthis circuit (Coplan et al., 2001; Meaney, 2001).