Attentional bias and evoked heart-rate response in specific phobia

The relationship between the evoked heart-rate (HR) reaction to phobic pictures and the attentional bias was investigated in specific phobics. Forty-five specific phobic and 39 control participants were shown phobia-related pictures while HR was being recorded; they were administered the modified dot-probe task, the modified Stroop task, and gave subjective ratings of pictures. Unlike control participants, specific phobics showed HR acceleration to phobia-related pictures, which was significantly correlated with their fear ratings, and a significant Stroop interference effect. There were no group differences with regard to an attentional bias in the dot-probe task but early deceleration of the HR reaction to phobic pictures was related to more pronounced selective attention toward these stimuli in phobics. The results provide partial support for Cook and Turpin's (1997) conjecture of a relationship between the early decelerative orienting component of the HR reaction and the selective attentional bias in phobia.     

阈下启动情绪控制目标对恐惧刺激注意分配的影响

本研究采用阈下启动范式来操纵情绪控制目标,并结合点探测范式来考察无意识情绪控制目标的启动对注意分配的影响。结果发现,情绪控制目标启动组在线索刺激呈现100ms和500ms的条件下,对负性刺激产生了注意回避,控制组在100ms对负性刺激产生了警觉。结果说明通过阈下启动情绪调节目标能够促进个体对负性刺激的注意回避。     

Health anxiety,anxiety sensitivity,and attentional biases for pictorial and linguistic health‐threat cues

The study investigated attentional biases for pictorial and linguistic health‐threat stimuli in high and low health anxious individuals, who were selected from the upper and lower quartile ranges of a normal sample using a screening measure of health anxiety. Attentional bias was assessed using a visual probe task which presented health‐threat and neutral pictures and words at two exposure durations, 500 ms and 1250 ms. The prediction that the high health anxious group would show a greater attentional bias for health‐threat cues than the low health anxious group was not supported despite the groups being well‐differentiated on a general measure of health anxiety, the Illness Attitudes Scale (IAS). Instead, the results indicated that individuals with high levels of anxiety sensitivity showed a significantly greater initial attentional bias for threat pictures compared with those with low anxiety sensitivity, as assessed by the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI).     

Time course of attentional bias for fear-relevant pictures in spider-fearful individuals

The time course of attentional biases for spider stimuli was assessed in two groups of individuals with high or low levels of spider fear. Pairs of photographs of spiders and cats were presented in a visual probe task with three exposure durations: 200, 500 and 2000 ms. Results indicated greater attentional bias for spider stimuli in high fear, than in low fear, individuals in the 200 ms condition. The attentional bias in the high fear group significantly reduced as stimulus exposure duration increased, with no significant biases found in the longer exposure conditions. Results support the view that high fear is associated with an enhanced initial attentional bias for fear-relevant stimuli, but that this attentional bias is not maintained over time.     

Health anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and attentional biases for pictorial and linguistic health-threat cues

The study investigated attentional biases for pictorial and linguistic health-threat stimuli in high and low health anxious individuals, who were selected from the upper and lower quartile ranges of a normal sample using a screening measure of health anxiety. Attentional bias was assessed using a visual probe task which presented health-threat and neutral pictures and words at two exposure durations, 500 ms and 1250 ms. The prediction that the high health anxious group would show a greater attentional bias for health-threat cues than the low health anxious group was not supported despite the groups being well-differentiated on a general measure of health anxiety, the Illness Attitudes Scale (IAS). Instead, the results indicated that individuals with high levels of anxiety sensitivity showed a significantly greater initial attentional bias for threat pictures compared with those with low anxiety sensitivity, as assessed by the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI).     

Attentional bias during emotional processing: evidence from an emotional flanker task using IAPS

Attention is biased towards threat-related stimuli. In three experiments, we investigated the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this processing bias. An emotional flanker task simultaneously presented affective or neutral pictures from the international affective picture system database either as central response-relevant stimuli or surrounding response-uninformative flankers. Participants’ response times to central stimuli was measured. The attentional bias was observed when stimuli were presented either for 1500?ms (Experiment 1) or 500?ms (Experiment 2). The threat-related attentional bias held regardless of the stimuli competing for attention even when presentation time was further reduced to 200?ms (Experiment 3). The results indicate that automatic and controlled mechanisms may interact to modulate the orientation of attention to threat. The data presented here shed new light on the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this long investigated by still largely unknown processing bias.     

Selective Processing of Threatening Words in Anxiety: The Role of Awareness

In three experiments, high and low trait-anxious individuals were required to classify a centrally located number as odd or even while ignoring spatially separate threat-related or neutral words. It was found that high anxious subjects showed a selective bias to process threatening stimuli when the stimuli were pattern masked after a brief exposure (14msec). However, this automatic processing bias was apparent only under certain conditions: distractors were within focal attention; masked and unmasked distractors were randomly intermixed; or masked trials were presented after unmasked trials. These results suggest that automatic processing biases in high traitanxious individuals are influenced by contextual factors. There was also a suggestion of a qualitative difference in attentional bias between conscious (unmasked) and nonconscious (masked) states, providing evidence for perception without awareness. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Orienting, emotion, and memory: phasic and tonic variation in heart rate predicts memory for emotional pictures in men

Arousal-related processes associated with heightened heart rate (HR) predict memory enhancement, especially for emotionally arousing stimuli. In addition, phasic HR deceleration reflects "orienting" and sensory receptivity during perception of stimuli. We hypothesized that both tonic elevations in HR as well as phasic HR deceleration during viewing of pictures would be associated with deeper encoding and better subsequent memory for stimuli. Emotional pictures are more memorable and cause greater HR deceleration than neutral pictures. Thus, we predicted that the relations between cardiac activity and memory enhancement would be most pronounced for emotionally-laden compared to neutral pictures. We measured HR in 53 males during viewing of unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant pictures, and tested memory for the pictures two days later. Phasic HR deceleration during viewing of individual pictures was greater for subsequently remembered than forgotten pictures across all three emotion categories. Elevated mean HR across the entire encoding epoch also predicted better memory performance, but only for emotionally arousing pictures. Elevated mean HR and phasic HR deceleration were associated, such that individuals with greater tonic HR also showed greater HR decelerations during picture viewing, but only for emotionally arousing pictures. Results suggest that tonic elevations in HR are associated both with greater orienting and heightened memory for emotionally arousing stimuli.     

Time course of attentional bias to emotional scenes in anxiety: Gaze direction and duration

Pictures of emotionally neutral, positive, and negative (threat‐ or harm‐related) scenes were presented for 3 seconds, paired with nonemotional control pictures. The eye fixations of high and low trait anxiety participants were monitored. Intensity of stimulus emotionality was varied, with two levels of perceptual salience for each picture (colour vs. greyscale). Regardless of perceptual salience, high anxiety was associated with preferential attention: (a) towards all types of emotional stimuli in initial orienting, as revealed by a higher probability of first fixation on the emotional picture than on the neutral picture of a pair; (b) towards positive and harm stimuli in a subsequent stage of early engagement, as shown by longer viewing times during the first 500 ms following onset of the pictures; and with (c) attention away from (i.e., avoidance) harm stimuli in a later phase, as indicated by shorter viewing times and lower frequency of fixation during the last 1000 ms of picture exposure. This suggests that the nature of the attentional bias varies as a function of the time course in the processing of emotional pictures.     

Time course of attentional bias to emotional scenes in anxiety: Gaze direction and duration

Pictures of emotionally neutral, positive, and negative (threat- or harm-related) scenes were presented for 3 seconds, paired with nonemotional control pictures. The eye fixations of high and low trait anxiety participants were monitored. Intensity of stimulus emotionality was varied, with two levels of perceptual salience for each picture (colour vs. greyscale). Regardless of perceptual salience, high anxiety was associated with preferential attention: (a) towards all types of emotional stimuli in initial orienting, as revealed by a higher probability of first fixation on the emotional picture than on the neutral picture of a pair; (b) towards positive and harm stimuli in a subsequent stage of early engagement, as shown by longer viewing times during the first 500 ms following onset of the pictures; and with (c) attention away from (i.e., avoidance) harm stimuli in a later phase, as indicated by shorter viewing times and lower frequency of fixation during the last 1000 ms of picture exposure. This suggests that the nature of the attentional bias varies as a function of the time course in the processing of emotional pictures.     

Anxiety sensitivity: the role of conscious awareness and selective attentional bias to physical threat

Selective attentional biases were examined amongst individuals varying in levels of physical anxiety sensitivity. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine attention towards anxiety symptomatology, social threat and positive words. Stimuli were presented above (unmasked) and below (masked) the level of conscious awareness. High physical anxiety sensitivity was associated with attentional vigilance for anxiety symptomatology words in both unmasked and masked conditions. For positive words, however, those high in anxiety sensitivity were found to avoid such stimuli when they were masked, whereas they exhibited a relative vigilance when unmasked. If the differences between awareness conditions are reliable, then the impact of the automatic vigilance for threat might be modified by conscious attempts to direct attention towards other types of stimuli.     

Time-course of attention for threatening pictures in high and low trait anxiety

Cognitive studies about anxiety suggest that the interplay between automatic and strategic biases in attention to threat is related to the persistence of fear. In the present study, the time-course of attention to pictures with varying threat levels was investigated in high trait anxious (HTA, n=21) and low trait anxious (LTA, n=22) students. In a visual probe detection task, high and mild threat pictures were presented at three durations: 100, 500, and 1250 ms. Results indicated that all individuals attended to the high threat pictures for the 100 ms condition. Differential responding between HTA and LTA individuals was found for the 500 ms condition: only HTA individuals showed an attentional bias for mild threatening stimuli. For the 1250 ms condition, the HTA individuals attended away from high and mild threat pictures. The observed pattern of differential attention to threatening pictures may explain the persistence of fear in HTA individuals.     

高低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪注意偏向的差异

摘 要 本研究采用返回抑制范式,以诱发厌恶、恐惧和中性情绪的图片为线索,考察高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪刺激注意偏向的差异及其发生机制。结果表明：（1）被试对诱发厌恶和恐惧的图片均产生了注意偏向且注意偏向是由注意解除困难所引起;（2）被试对诱发厌恶图片的注意偏向程度显著大于对诱发恐惧图片的注意偏向程度;（3）高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对诱发厌恶和恐惧图片的注意偏向程度之间的组间差异均不显著。     

Anticipatory and event related changes in heart rate as indicators of attention processes

The present study was concerned with the question of whether phasic event-related heart rate (HR) changes under easy intake conditions account for the association between anticipatory HR deceleration and task performance in a choice reaction time (RT) task with a fixed foreperiod. The task employed differed from simple RT tasks especially with regard to processing and attention demands. Subjects were required to determine as quickly and accurately as possible whether a probe, presented for 80 ms, was identical or not to one of two distinct memory items, presented at the onset of each trial. Reaction times as well as accuracy of responses were determined. The results of the present study were indicative of a reliable anticipatory HR deceleration which was related to latency of responses to the probe stimulus. Subjects with stronger decelerations reacted faster than subjects with diminished or missing decelerations. Furthermore a relation was found between this association and the heart rate changes to repeated presentations of a non-signal auditory stimulus under habituation conditions. Results were discussed in terms of differences in the regulation or control of attentional processes.     

威胁性刺激注意偏向的时间进程

注意偏向各成分间关系及发生时间进程尚存争议。本研究以情绪图片为刺激,采用类别判断任务,通过眼动技术探讨正常个体对威胁性刺激注意偏向的时间进程。结果显示,(1)向左的首次眼跳概率高于向右,而潜伏期短于向右,存在左侧偏向;(2)注意回避发生在250ms以内,解除锁定困难发生在400ms之后;(3)注意偏向影响类别判断过程。结果表明,注意回避与左侧偏向在威胁性刺激注意偏向形成早期存在相互作用,且比解除锁定困难更早发生。     

Boundary conditions for the influence of unfamiliar non-target primes in unconscious evaluative priming: The moderating role of attentional task sets

Evaluative priming by masked emotional stimuli that are not consciously perceived has been taken as evidence that affective stimulus evaluation can also occur unconsciously. However, as masked priming effects were small and frequently observed only for familiar primes that there also presented as visible targets in an evaluative decision task, priming was thought to reflect primarily response activation based on acquired S–R associations and not evaluative semantic stimulus analysis. The present study therefore assessed across three experiments boundary conditions for the emergence of masked evaluative priming effects with unfamiliar primes in an evaluative decision task and investigated the role of the frequency of target repetition on priming with pictorial and verbal stimuli. While familiar primes elicited robust priming effects in all conditions, priming effects by unfamiliar primes were reliably obtained for low repetition (pictures) or unrepeated targets (words), but not for targets repeated at a high frequency. This suggests that unfamiliar masked stimuli only elicit evaluative priming effects when the task set associated with the visible target involves evaluative semantic analysis and is not based on S–R triggered responding as for high repetition targets. The present results therefore converge with the growing body of evidence demonstrating attentional control influences on unconscious processing.     

胖负面身体自我女性对身体信息注意偏向成分的时间进程：一项眼动追踪研究

虽然目前大量研究基于Vitousek和Hollon (1990)提出的饮食失调认知模型对胖负面身体自我图式者或饮食失调者的注意偏向进行探讨, 但对其注意偏向的成分仍未得出一致结论, 且尚无研究查考其时间进程特点。研究采用更具生态效度的身体图片为实验刺激, 刺激呈现时间2000ms, 采用传统经典的点探测范式与眼动追踪技术结合, 探讨胖负面身体自我女性对身体信息注意偏向成分的时间进程。基于前人的工作(Castellanos et al., 2009; Garner, Mogg, & Bradley, 2006), 研究考察了四个眼动数据：首视点定向偏向分数、首视点潜伏期偏向分数、首视点注视时间偏向以及总注视时间偏向分数, 系统探讨了注意定向、探测时间、最初注意维持/回避以及总体注意维持/回避。眼动数据发现, 胖负面身体自我图式者对不同身体图片存在不同的注意偏向模式, 对胖图片为注意警觉—维持模式, 具体表现为早期加速探测、注意定向, 以及最初的注意维持和总体注意维持; 对瘦图片仅为注意警觉, 具体表现为早期加速探测; 行为数据支持实验组对胖图片的注意维持以及对身体图片的注意脱离困难。该结果部分支持Vitousek和Hollon (1990)的模型, 即负面身体自我图式能够易化对图式一致信息的加工, 而未发现对图式不一致信息的回避或抑制。     

Attention for emotional faces under restricted awareness revisited: do emotional faces automatically attract attention?

Theoretical models of attention for affective information have assigned a special status to the cognitive processing of emotional facial expressions. One specific claim in this regard is that emotional faces automatically attract visual attention. In three experiments, the authors investigated attentional cueing by angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions that were presented under conditions of limited awareness. In these experiments, facial expressions were presented in a masked (14 ms or 34 ms, masked by a neutral face) and unmasked fashion (34 ms or 100 ms). Compared with trials containing neutral cues, delayed responding was found on trials with emotional cues in the unmasked, 100-ms condition, suggesting stronger allocation of cognitive resources to emotional faces. However, in both masked and unmasked conditions, the hypothesized cueing of visual attention to the location of emotional facial expression was not found. In contrary, attentional cueing by emotional faces was less strong compared with neutral faces in the unmasked, 100-ms condition. These data suggest that briefly presented emotional faces influence cognitive processing but do not automatically capture visual attention.     

Anxiety sensitivity, conscious awareness and selective attentional biases in children

The current study investigated whether physical anxiety sensitivity (AS) is associated with selective attentional biases to affective stimuli in children. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine the deployment of attention towards words pertaining to anxiety symptomatology, socially threatening words, and positive words, in samples of 8-10-year-old children. Word pairs were presented under both masked and unmasked conditions. Irrespective of masking, children high in physical AS displayed an attentional vigilance for emotional words relative to neutral words, whereas those low in physical AS displayed a relative avoidance of such material. The results of this study are interesting as they not only suggest the presence of automatic AS-related biases in childhood, but that this is a general emotionality bias rather than one related to specific anxiety-related stimuli.     

Emotional and autonomic responses to visual traumatic stimuli

A fine-grain analysis of autonomic responses are presented with the purpose of extending the conclusions from a previously published paper (Christianson & Nilsson, 1984) on emotional and memorial responses to traumatic visual stimuli. Control subjects were presented with a series of 18 slides of neutral faces, whereas the experimental subjects were presented with six slides of horrible facial injuries in positions 7–12, interspersed between six slides of neutral faces in the beginning, and six slides of neutral faces at the end of the series. The time course of heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC) during stimulus presentation was recorded. These data showed an initial pattern of increase in SC, but not in HR. This pattern was subsequently replaced by a combined increase in both SC and HR. The results are discrepant to previous work and are interpreted as effects of not informing the subjects about the gruesome slides to be presented.