不同线索下特质焦虑个体的返回抑制

焦虑与注意偏向的研究是近年来情绪与认知领域的热点。为探讨特质焦虑个体的注意偏向特点及其返回抑制能力是否受不同线索的调节, 采用特质焦虑量表筛选高特质焦虑大学生29名, 低特质焦虑大学生28名完成线索-靶子任务。要求被试在提示线索消失后, 对位置进行快而准地辨别反应, 分别探索中性和情绪性提示线索下被试的返回抑制。结果发现：(1)在中性线索条件下, 高焦虑个体平均反应时慢于低焦虑个体。(2) 在情绪线索条件下, 高焦虑个体在负性线索下的反应时小于在正性线索下的反应时; 高、低焦虑个体在各种SOA条件下均出现了返回抑制, 但各组返回抑制量受到情绪线索的调节：在正性情绪线索条件下, 两组返回抑制量没有显著差异; 在负性情绪线索下, 高焦虑个体返回抑制量显著小于低焦虑个体。这表明, (1)焦虑个体的注意偏向受到刺激信息的影响：只对负性情绪线索出现注意警觉; (2)只有在涉及负性情绪信息时高、低焦虑个体返回抑制能力才有差异, 高焦虑个体存在对负性情绪线索的抑制困难。

Inhibition of Return in Trait Anxieties Under Different Cues

Inhibition of return (IOR), as an important part of attention bias, was generally considered as an adaptive mechanism during human evolution. Previous studies on the peculiarities of anxiety individual’s attention mainly focused on the attention orientation and inhibition ability; the effects of the natures of the stimuli on post-orientation inhibition, and the relation between the anxiety individual’s features and attentional bias, are still unclear. In the present study, we will focus on the attention bias of the anxiety group, and try to figure out the possible reasons underlying IOR features by using the cue-target paradigm with different cues. Traits Anxiety Inventory was used to test the undergraduates before the experiment, and finally twenty-nine undergraduates with high trait anxiety and twenty-eight with low trait anxiety were chosen as participants. In two experiments, participants were instructed to perform a cue-target task as accurately and quickly as possible, which included two kinds of uninformative cues: neutral cognitive cues and emotional face cues. Experiment 1 suggested that participants of high anxiety reacted more slowly than that of low anxiety under the condition of neutral cognitive cues. Although IOR did not appear in this experiment. Experiment 2 indicated that IOR effect occurred under all SOA levels for both groups, and IOR magnitudes of the two groups were modulated by emotional cues. The two groups showed no significant difference on IOR effect under the condition of positive cues, while IOR effect of the high anxiety group turned out to be much smaller than that of the low anxiety group under the condition of negative cues. These experiments suggested that only under negative emotional circumstances, groups of different trait anxiety showed different IOR abilities, and particularly, high anxiety group’s IOR ability was impaired, which provided specific information on possible improvement of the anxiety symptoms.