攻击性信息对脆弱型高自尊大学生返回抑制的影响机制

为考察攻击性信息对脆弱型高自尊大学生返回抑制的影响机制,本研究采用线索靶子范式,分别将攻击性及中性词汇作为靶子（实验1）和线索（实验2）呈现。实验1发现,脆弱型和安全型高自尊组对攻击性信息均存在注意捕获,从而使攻击性信息的返回抑制量降低。实验2发现,脆弱型高自尊组对攻击性信息存在注意解除困难,从而使攻击性信息的返回抑制量降低。脆弱型高自尊大学生对攻击性信息存在过多的注意维持,降低了视觉搜索效率,这可是其好发攻击性行为的潜在认知加工机制。     

低自尊个体注意偏向的ERP研究

本研究以高兴、愤怒和中性面孔图片为实验材料,采用空间线索任务,借助事件相关电位技术(ERP)探讨低自尊个体注意偏向的内在机制及生理基础,即从电生理的角度,探讨注意偏向的内在机制是反映了注意的快速定向还是注意的解脱困难,亦或是既有快速注意定向又伴随注意的解脱困难。行为数据发现,高低自尊个体在有效提示下的反应显著快于无效提示条件。脑电数据发现,无效提示条件下,愤怒面孔后的靶子比高兴和中性面孔后的靶子在低自尊个体中诱发了更大的P1和更小的N1波幅,有效提示下无显著差异;高自尊个体在N1和P1波幅上无显著结果。晚期P300成分上,无效提示比有效提示诱发了更正的波幅,未发现自尊相关的显著差异。结果表明,低自尊个体对评价性威胁信息(愤怒)的注意偏向是对威胁信息(愤怒)的注意解脱困难。     

Reduced habituation to angry faces: increased attentional capture as to override inhibition of return

The aim of this paper was to study whether real angry faces do capture attention to the extent of overcoming the inhibition of return (IOR) effect and whether the anxiety level of participants modulates this effect by stressing biases toward threatening stimuli. With this purpose, participants categorized the emotional valence of face targets in a standard spatial cueing procedure suitable to measure IOR. In Experiment 1, participants were selected according to their high vs. low-trait anxiety, whereas in Experiment 2 participants were induced a positive vs. anxiety mood state. The typical IOR effect was observed with neutral and happy face targets, which disappeared with angry face targets. Similar results were observed for all anxiety groups and in both experiments. The results indicate that IOR is overridden when the target is a biologically relevant angry face, as highly relevant targets should suffer less from habituation to attentional capture regardless of anxiety. We suggest that these data show that attentional capture is less likely to habituate for threatening information, so that no cost is measured in detecting new threatening information appearing at recently cued locations.     

Effects of threat cues on attentional shifting, disengagement and response slowing in anxious individuals

According to cognitive models of anxiety, attentional biases for threat may cause or maintain anxiety states. Previous research using spatial cueing tasks has been interpreted in terms of difficulty in disengaging attention from threat in anxious individuals, as indicated by contrasts of response times (RTs) from threat cue versus neutral cue trials. However, on spatial cueing tasks, differences in RT between threat cue and neutral cue trials may stem from a slowing effect of threat on RT, as well as effects on allocation of visuospatial attention. The present study examined the effects of threat cues on both attentional cueing and response slowing. High and low anxious individuals completed a central cue task, which assessed threat-related response slowing, and a spatial cueing task, which assessed attentional biases for angry, happy and neutral faces. Results indicated that interpretation of the anxiety-related bias for threat depended on whether the effect of response slowing was taken into account. The study illustrates an important problem in using the modified spatial cueing task to assess components of threat-related attentional bias. As this experimental method may reflect both threat-related attentional cueing and response slowing effects, it cannot be assumed to provide pure measures of shift or disengagement components of attention bias.     

Interacting effects of worry and anxiety on attentional disengagement from threat

Recent work suggests that the ability to disengage attention from threatening information is impaired in people who suffer from anxiety and dysphoria. It has been suggested that this impaired ability to disengage from threat might specifically be associated with the tendency to perseverate about threat (i.e., worry), which is a main characteristic of anxiety disorders and a wide range of other psychopathologies. However, no studies have yet addressed this issue. The present study examined whether trait worry as well as worry intensity after experimental worry induction are associated with impaired ability to disengage attention from threatening cues (angry faces), independently from or in conjunction with anxiety. Sixty-one participants performed a visual cueing experiment that required detection of a target stimulus at one of two possible locations. Prior to the target neutral, happy or angry facial cues appeared at one of these two locations; when there is a relatively long period between the cue and the target (>300 ms), an overall faster responding to invalidly cued trials relative to validly cued trials is believed to indicate inhibition of return (IOR) to a recently attended location. A reduced IOR for angry faces was only found when both trait worry and anxiety were high. When anxiety was kept constant, both trait worry and state worry were associated with enhanced IOR for neutral faces instead. The results seem to suggest that specific threat-related deficiencies in IOR may be a function of the co-occurrence of worry and anxiety.     

抑郁个体对情绪面孔的返回抑制能力不足

探讨抑郁对情绪面孔返回抑制能力的影响。以贝克抑郁量表、自评抑郁量表、CCMD-3和汉密顿抑郁量表为工具筛选出了正常对照组、抑郁康复组和抑郁患者组各17名被试进行了真人情绪面孔线索-靶子任务的行为学实验和事件相关电位(ERP)实验。在线索靶子范式中, 靶子在线索消失后出现, 被试对靶子的位置作出反应。行为学实验显示线索靶子间隔时间(stimulus onset asynchronies, SOA)为14ms时, 正常对照组对中性面孔有返回抑制效应, 抑郁康复组对所有面孔均存在返回抑制效应, 患者组对愤怒、悲伤面孔和中性面孔存在返回抑制效应; SOA为250ms时三组被试均对悲伤面孔存在返回抑制能力不足, 以患者组最突出, 康复组对高兴面孔存在返回抑制能力不足; SOA为750ms时正常组对悲伤面孔存在返回抑制效应, 康复组对高兴和悲伤面孔存在返回抑制能力不足, 患者组对悲伤面孔存在返回抑制能力不足, 对愤怒面孔存在返回抑制效应。在SOA为750ms的条件下, ERP波形特点为正常组对高兴面孔线索P3波幅大于其他组, 对高兴面孔无效提示P1波幅小于其他面孔, 对悲伤面孔有效提示P1波幅小于高兴面孔, 对高兴面孔有效提示P3波幅大于患者组, 对悲伤面孔无效提示P3波幅大于其他组; 康复组对悲伤面孔线索P3波幅大于其他面孔, 对高兴面孔有效提示P3波幅大于患者组, 对悲伤面孔无效提示P3波幅小于正常组; 患者组对悲伤面孔线索P1波幅大于其他组、P3波幅大于其他面孔, 对悲伤面孔无效提示P3波幅小于正常组, 高兴面孔有效提示P3波幅小于其他组。提示抑郁患者对负性刺激有返回抑制能力不足, 这种对负性刺激抑制能力的缺失导致抑郁个体难以抗拒负性事件的干扰而受到不良情绪状态的困扰, 所以他们可能更多的体验到抑郁情绪, 并致使抑郁持续和发展。而抑郁康复个体对高兴、悲伤面孔均有返回抑制能力不足, 这让康复个体能同时感受到正、负性刺激, 从而能保持一种认知和情绪上特定的平衡。     

Individual differences in emotional reactivity moderate the strength of the relationship between attentional and implicit-memory biases towards threat-related stimuli

The study investigated whether the strength of the relationship between attentional and implicit-memory biases for threat-related material can be moderated by individual differences in temperament and personality. A spatial cueing task, where task-irrelevant angry, happy, and neutral faces acted as spatial cues preceding a target, was immediately followed by an unexpected “old/new” task involving previously presented faces. Temperament-based emotional reactivity (ER; one's typical response strength to emotional stimuli) predicted improved memory performance for angry faces in the “old/new” task. Critically, the relationship between the attentional bias towards threat (indexed by a cue validity index, i.e., a difference in response times on trials where cues with angry expression were presented in the same versus different location to the subsequent target) and enhanced implicit-memory for previously presented task-irrelevant threat-related information was found to be moderated by ER. The current findings provide the first evidence that temperament traits can offer novel insights into the mechanisms enhancing cognitive biases towards threat in the typical population.     

自尊对情绪面孔注意偏向的影响

研究表明低自尊个体对负性信息表现出高度的警觉和关注,而高自尊个体相对来说注意积极地方面,但并未表现明显偏向。为了精确记录注意选择神经加工时间进程,进一步从电生理学角度对低自尊个体的负性注意偏向进行探讨,本研究运用事件相关电位（ERP）技术对不同自尊个体在点-探测任务过程中的注意偏向进行研究。实验一以129名在校大学生作为被试,以大学生面孔情绪图片（高兴、悲伤和中性）作为实验材料,结果发现,高低自尊个体之间没有出现注意偏向的差异。实验二以实验一筛选出的30名高低自尊个体作为被试,选择了更具负性情绪唤醒的愤怒图片作为实验材料（高兴、愤怒和中性）,行为数据结果发现,两组被试都没有出现注意偏向,相反,无论是在高兴面孔条件下还是在愤怒面孔条件下,低自尊个体的反应时都快于高自尊个体;电生理学数据结果发现,在低自尊个体中,在两种情绪面孔条件下,有效线索的P1峰值显著高于无效线索,而无效线索的N2pc峰值显著高于有效线索。电生理学数据表明,无论是负性的还是正性的情绪性的信息都能引起低自尊个体的更多注意,表明低自尊个体更容易受到情绪性信息的影响。     

Inhibition of return in subliminal letter priming

The present study combined exogenous spatial cueing with masked repetition priming to study attentional influences on the processing of subliminal stimuli. Participants performed an alphabetic decision task (letter versus pseudo-letter classification) with central targets and briefly presented peripherally located primes that were either cued or not cued by an abrupt onset. A relatively long delay between cue and prime was used to investigate the effect of inhibition of return (IOR) on the processing of subliminal masked primes. Primes presented to the left visual field showed standard effects of Cue Validity and no IOR (significant priming with valid cues only). Primes presented to the right visual field showed no priming from valid cues (an IOR effect), and priming with invalid cues that depended on hand of response to letter targets (right-hand in Experiment 1, left-hand in Experiment 2). The results are interpreted in terms of a differential speed of engagement and disengagement of attention to the right and left visual fields for alphabetic stimuli, coupled with a complex interaction that arises between Prime Relatedness and response-hand.     

不同位置的情绪面孔加工对返回抑制的影响

分别将情绪面孔图片作为线索（实验一）或靶子（实验二）呈现,利用线索-靶子范式考察了定位任务中情绪面孔加工对返回抑制的影响。结果发现：以不同情绪面孔作为线索时,返回抑制稳定出现,表现出与情绪加工的分离;而当情绪面孔作为靶子时,与中性面孔相比,情绪面孔引发的返回抑制量显著较小。该研究表明,在定位任务中,返回抑制不受线索生物性的影响,但是会受到靶子性质的影响,反映出机体在不同条件下对空间注意和情绪加工的灵活性。     

Aging and visual search: automatic and controlled attentional bias to threat faces

Using a visual search paradigm, we investigated how age affected attentional bias to emotional facial expressions. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants searched for a discrepant facial expression in a matrix of otherwise homogeneous faces. Both younger and older adults showed a more effective search when the discrepant face was angry rather than happy or neutral. However, when the angry faces served as non-target distractors, younger adults' search was less effective than happy or neutral distractor conditions. In contrast, older adults showed a more efficient search with angry distractors than happy or neutral distractors, indicating that older adults were better able to inhibit angry facial expressions. In Experiment 3, we found that even a top-down search goal could not override the angry face superiority effect in guiding attention. In addition, RT distribution analyses supported that both younger and older adults performed the top-down angry face search qualitatively differently from the top-down happy face search. The current research indicates that threat face processing involves automatic attentional shift and a controlled attentional process. The current results suggest that age only influenced the controlled attentional process.     

Watch out! Directional threat-related postures cue attention and the eyes

Previous work indicates that threatening facial expressions with averted eye gaze can act as a signal of imminent danger, enhancing attentional orienting in the gazed-at direction. However, this threat-related gaze-cueing effect is only present in individuals reporting high levels of anxiety. The present study used eye tracking to investigate whether additional directional social cues, such as averted angry and fearful human body postures, not only cue attention, but also the eyes. The data show that although body direction did not predict target location, anxious individuals made faster eye movements when fearful or angry postures were facing towards (congruent condition) rather than away (incongruent condition) from peripheral targets. Our results provide evidence for attentional cueing in response to threat-related directional body postures in those with anxiety. This suggests that for such individuals, attention is guided by threatening social stimuli in ways that can influence and bias eye movement behaviour.     

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.     

Effects of 7.5% CO(2) inhalation on allocation of spatial attention to facial cues of emotional expression

Increased vigilance to threat-related stimuli is thought to be a core cognitive feature of anxiety. We sought to investigate the cognitive impact of experimentally induced anxiety, by means of a 7.5% CO(2) challenge, which acts as an unconditioned anxiogenic stimulus, on attentional bias for positive and negative facial cues of emotional expression in the dot-probe task. In two experiments we found robust physiological and subjective effects of the CO(2) inhalation consistent with the claim that the procedure reliably induces anxiety. Data from the dot-probe task demonstrated an attentional bias to emotional facial expressions compared with neutral faces regardless of valence (happy, angry, and fearful). These attentional effects, however, were entirely inconsistent in terms of their relationship with induced anxiety. We conclude that the previously reported poor reliability of this task is the most parsimonious explanation for our conflicting findings and that future research should develop a more reliable paradigm for measuring attentional bias in this field.     

Effects of spatial cues on locating emotional targets

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slower responding to a visual target appearing at a previously cued versus uncued location. In three experiments, we asked whether IOR would be affected by the emotional content of target stimuli. Participants reported the location of negative (spiders, angry faces) or neutral (objects, neutral faces) targets as quickly and accurately as possible after a valid or invalid location cue (a simple circle). IOR was significantly smaller when detecting negative versus neutral targets, but only after repeated exposures to these stimuli (i.e., with blocked presentations). This effect was eliminated when target type was randomized within blocks. By presenting negative versus neutral targets in short alternating blocks and examining IOR on the first trial of each new block, we show that the emotional modulation of IOR stems from the affective context in place before visual orienting is initiated, not by perceptual processing of the target after cue offset.     

Do threatening stimuli draw or hold visual attention in subclinical anxiety?

Biases in information processing undoubtedly play an important role in the maintenance of emotion and emotional disorders. In an attentional cueing paradigm, threat words and angry faces had no advantage over positive or neutral words (or faces) in attracting attention to their own location, even for people who were highly state-anxious. In contrast, the presence of threatening cues (words and faces) had a strong impact on the disengagement of attention. When a threat cue was presented and a target subsequently presented in another location, high state-anxious individuals took longer to detect the target relative to when either a positive or a neutral cue was presented. It is concluded that threat-related stimuli affect attentional dwell time and the disengage component of attention, leaving the question of whether threat stimuli affect the shift component of attention open to debate.     

Focus on the positive: Anxiety modulates the effects of emotional stimuli on hemispheric attention

People with high levels of trait anxiety are said to orient attention selectively to threatening stimuli ( and ), but this effect is sometimes difficult to replicate. We suggest a reason for this difficulty is that typical tests of the spatial attention bias in anxiety failed to consider together: (1) the differential effects of positive and threatening stimuli on attention in anxiety, (2) the separate contributions of each hemisphere to the attention bias, and (3) whether the attention bias in anxiety is restricted to orienting or can be observed more strongly in the conflict or alerting networks of attention. We compared the effects of schematic angry, happy, and neutral face cues using a lateralized version of Posner’s Attention Network Task (Lateralized Attention Network Test) which distinguishes spatial Orienting Cost (due to an invalid cue; disengagement) from spatial Orienting Benefit (due to a valid cue; hypervigilance), and which considers executive Conflict resolution and Alerting in addition to spatial Orienting in each hemisphere separately. We tested participants with high and low trait anxiety measured by the STAI-TA (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1983). Surprisingly, happy face cues rather than angry face cues interacted with target visual field and participant level of anxiety. Happy face cues presented to participants with low anxiety elicited maximal Orienting Benefit and minimal Orienting Cost for targets presented to the left visual field. Anxious individuals failed to benefit from happy cues in the left visual field. We suggest that lateralized positive cues can provide a more sensitive index of attention changes in anxiety than is provided by centrally-presented threatening cues.     

Temporal processing of emotional stimuli: the capture and release of attention by angry faces

Neuroimaging data suggest that emotional information, especially threatening faces, automatically captures attention and receives rapid processing. While this is consistent with the majority of behavioral data, behavioral studies of the attentional blink (AB) additionally reveal that aversive emotional first target (T1) stimuli are associated with prolonged attentional engagement or "dwell" time. One explanation for this difference is that few AB studies have utilized manipulations of facial emotion as the T1. To address this, schematic faces varying in expression (neutral, angry, happy) served as the T1 in the current research. Results revealed that the blink associated with an angry T1 face was, primarily, of greater magnitude than that associated with either a neutral or happy T1 face, and also that initial recovery from this processing bias was faster following angry, compared with happy, T1 faces. The current data therefore provide important information regarding the time-course of attentional capture by angry faces: Angry faces are associated with both the rapid capture and rapid release of attention.     

Attentional bias in anxiety: a behavioral and ERP study

Accumulating evidence suggests the existence of a processing bias in favor of threat-related stimulation in anxious individuals. Using behavioral and ERP measures, the present study investigated the deployment of attention to face stimuli with different emotion expressions in high-anxious and low-anxious participants. An attention-shifting paradigm was used in which faces with neutral, angry, fearful, sad, or happy expressions were presented singly at fixation. Participants had to fixate on the face cue and then discriminate a target shape that appeared randomly above, below, to the left, or right of the fixated face. The behavioral data show that high-anxious participants were slower to respond to targets regardless of the emotion expressed by the face cue. In contrast, the ERP data indicate that threat-related faces elicited faster latencies and greater amplitudes of early ERP components in high-anxious than in low-anxious individuals. The between-group pattern in ERP waveforms suggests that the slower reaction times in high-anxious participants might reflect increased attentional dwelling on the face cues, rather than a general slowing of response enacting.     

Identification of angry faces in the attentional blink

According to cognitive and neural theories of emotion, attentional processing of innate threat stimuli, such as angry facial expressions, is prioritised over neutral stimuli. To test this hypothesis, the present study used a modified version of the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm to investigate the effect of emotional face stimuli on the attentional blink (AB). The target stimuli were schematic faces which depicted threatening (angry), positive or neutral facial expressions. Results showed that performance accuracy was enhanced (i.e., the AB was reduced) on trials in which the second target was an angry face, rather than a neutral face. Results extend previous research by demonstrating that angry faces reduce the AB, and that this effect is found for schematic facial expressions. These findings further support the proposal that, when there is competition for attentional resources, threat stimuli are given higher priority in processing compared with non-threatening stimuli.