On the relative sensitivity of spatial and non-spatial measures of attentional bias: Emotion-induced blindness, the dot probe, and gradations in ratings of negative pictures

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandersan Onie ◽  
Steven Most
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Disorders ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Spatial Relationship ◽  
Relative Sensitivity ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Dot Probe ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Emotional Pictures ◽  
Valence And Arousal

Attentional biases towards negative information are implicated in various emotional disorders. The literature probing this relationship relies on assumptions that the tasks used to measure attentional biases are sensitive to the negative emotional qualities of stimuli, but are such assumptions justified? We assessed the degree to which two widely used tasks – the dot probe and emotion-induced blindness – displayed sensitivity to gradations in valence and arousal ratings for negative emotional pictures. For emotion-induced blindness (the failure to see a target the follows an emotional distractor in a rapidly presented sequence of items), there was strong evidence of sensitivity to gradations in both valence and arousal. For the dot probe (a spatial attention task where latency to respond to a target depends on whether it appears at or away from the location of an emotional stimulus), there was moderate evidence of sensitivity to emotional vs. neutral stimuli, but there was also moderate to strong evidence that the task was insensitive to gradations in valence and arousal. That said, in the dot probe, response latency regardless of spatial relationship between the target and the emotional image appeared sensitive to gradations in stimulus emotionality; suggesting that such sensitivity may be characteristic of non-spatial, rather than spatial, aspects of attention. Implications for attentional bias studies are discussed. Notably, the finding that emotion-induced blindness was sensitive to gradations in ratings of emotional pictures supports claims that the effect arises due to stimulus emotionality rather than simply differences in visual features of pictures (e.g., color, brightness, complexity).

Does a Single Session of Training Modify Emotion-Induced Blindness?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandersan Onie ◽  
Chris Donkin ◽  
Steven Most
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Target Interval ◽  
Single Session ◽  
Attentional Bias Modification ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Bias Modification ◽  
Negative Stimuli

Emotion-Induced Blindness (EIB) is a robust phenomenon in which people fail to see targets that appear in spatiotemporal proximity to task-irrelevant emotional distractors. Evidence suggests that it involves different mechanisms than tasks widely used to assess attentional biases and their modification. To assess the utility of EIB as an attentional bias modification task, we investigated its malleability in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants trained to ignore negative distractors, ignore neutral distractors, or simply received equivalent exposure to negative distractors over 720 trials. Analyses revealed strong evidence against effects of training condition. Experiment 2 investigated whether training effects might emerge with EIB was tested at a longer distractor-target interval and added an additional, no-distractor comparison condition. Analyses of Experiment 2 provided some evidence that exposure to negative stimuli may reduce the impact of novel negative stimuli, which may hold implications for the wider attentional literature.

Examining Attentional Bias in Scrupulosity: Null Findings From the Dot Probe Paradigm

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 302-314
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Jacoby ◽  
Noah C. Berman ◽  
Robert Graziano ◽  
Jonathan S. Abramowitz
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Dot Probe ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Compulsive Symptom ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive Symptom

Research consistently demonstrates that individuals with anxiety symptoms exhibit attentional biases toward threatening stimuli using various computer-based tasks. However, the presence of attentional biases across obsessive-compulsive symptom presentations has been mixed and requires clarification. This study was the first to use the dot probe paradigm to investigate the association between scrupulosity symptoms (obsessions and compulsions having to do with religion and morality) and selective attention to scrupulosity-relevant lexical stimuli. Contrary to hypotheses, individuals with higher levels of scrupulosity did not selectively attend (i.e., have faster reaction times) to scrupulosity-specific threat words (e.g., hell) more so than to general threat or neutral words. Various potential explanations for these null findings, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

Attentional bias to incentive stimuli in frequent ketamine users

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (9) ◽  
pp. 1331-1340 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. A. Morgan ◽  
H. Rees ◽  
H. V. Curran
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Recreational Drug ◽  
Dot Probe ◽  
Attentional Shift ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
Short Stimulus ◽  
Different Populations

BackgroundThe attention-grabbing properties of drugs to drug-using individuals have been well documented and recent research has begun to suggest that such attentional bias may be related to the severity of drug dependency. Dependence on ketamine has been reported anecdotally but no systematic study has investigated this phenomenon. We aimed to explore attentional biases to incentive stimuli in different populations of ketamine users.MethodUsing a dot-probe paradigm, attentional bias to both drug-related and money-related stimuli was investigated in 150 participants: 30 frequent ketamine users, 30 infrequent ketamine users, 30 ex-ketamine users, 30 poly-drug users and 30 non-drug-using controls. Two stimulus presentation times were used (200 and 2000 ms) to investigate whether attentional bias was as a result of an automatic or a more conscious attentional shift. Participants also rated the degree to which stimuli used in the dot-probe paradigm were pleasurable.ResultsFrequent ketamine users demonstrated an attentional bias to both types of incentive stimuli only at the short stimulus presentation interval and this was significantly correlated with degree of ketamine use. No attentional biases were observed in any of the other groups. All groups rated money stimuli as more pleasurable than neutral stimuli.ConclusionsThese data support incentive models of drug use and demonstrate the ability of the attentional bias paradigm to discriminate recreational drug users from those with more dependent patterns of use. Ketamine is a potentially dependence-forming drug.

scholarly journals A Pictorial Dot Probe Task to Assess Food-Related Attentional Bias in Youth With and Without Obesity: Overview of Indices and Evaluation of Their Reliability

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leentje Vervoort ◽  
Maya Braun ◽  
Maarten De Schryver ◽  
Tiffany Naets ◽  
Ernst H. W. Koster ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Response Speed ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Dot Probe ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Attentional Processes ◽  
Bias Score ◽  
Probe Task ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
General Response

Several versions of the dot probe detection task are frequently used to assess maladaptive attentional processes associated with a broad range of psychopathology and health behavior, including eating behavior and weight. However, there are serious concerns about the reliability of the indices derived from the paradigm as measurement of attentional bias toward or away from salient stimuli. The present paper gives an overview of different attentional bias indices used in psychopathology research and scrutinizes three types of indices (the traditional attentional bias score, the dynamic trial-level base scores, and the probability index) calculated from a pictorial version of the dot probe task to assess food-related attentional biases in children and youngsters with and without obesity. Correlational analyses reveal that dynamic scores (but not the traditional and probability indices) are dependent on general response speed. Reliability estimates are low for the traditional and probability indices. The higher reliability for the dynamic indices is at least partially explained by general response speed. No significant group differences between youth with and without obesity are found, and correlations with weight are also non-significant. Taken together, results cast doubt on the applicability of this specific task for both experimental and individual differences research on food-related attentional biases in youth. However, researchers are encouraged to make and test adaptations to the procedure or computational algorithm in an effort to increase psychometric quality of the task and to report psychometric characteristics of their version of the task for their specific sample.

Emotions Under the Skin

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 161-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Silva ◽  
Ana Cláudia Ferreira ◽  
Isabel Soares ◽  
Francisco Esteves
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Style ◽  
Attachment Styles ◽  
The Other ◽  
Regulatory Function ◽  
Physiological Reactivity ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Lower Accuracy ◽  
Emotional Pictures ◽  
Valence And Arousal

Abstract. The present study examined physiological reactivity to emotional stimuli as a function of attachment style. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) and heart rate (HR) changes were simultaneously recorded while participants engaged in a visual attentional task. The task included positive, neutral, and negative emotional pictures, and required the identification of a target (neutral picture rotated 90° to the left or right), among a stream of pictures in which an emotional distracter (positive or negative) was presented. Participants additionally rated each of the emotional distracters for valence and arousal. Behavioral results on the attentional task showed that positive pictures facilitated overall target detection for all participants, compared to negative and neutral pictures, and that anxiously attached participants had significantly lower accuracy scores, relative to the other groups. Affective ratings indicated that positive pictures were rated as being more pleasant than negative ones, although no differences were found in HR changes to picture valence. In contrast, negative pictures were evaluated as being highly arousing. Consistent with this, negative pictures elicited larger SCRs in both insecure anxious and avoidant groups, especially for the anxious while the secure group showed SCRs unaffected by stimuli’s arousal. Present results show that individuals with different attachment styles reveal distinct patterns of attentional bias, appraisal, and physiological reactivity toward emotionally arousing stimuli. These findings further highlight the regulatory function of the attachment system.

Visual disgust-elicitors produce an attentional blink independent of contextual and trait-level pathogen avoidance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Perone ◽  
David Vaughn Becker ◽  
Joshua M. Tybur
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Visual Attention ◽  
Attentional Blink ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Trait Level ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Pathogen Avoidance

Multiple studies report that disgust-eliciting stimuli are perceived as salient and subsequently capture selective attention. In the current study, we aimed to better understand the nature of temporal attentional biases toward disgust-eliciting stimuli and to investigate the extent to which these biases are sensitive to contextual and trait-level pathogen avoidance motives. Participants (N=116) performed in an Emotional Attentional Blink (EAB) task in which task-irrelevant disgust-eliciting, fear-eliciting, or neutral images preceded a target by 200, 500, or 800 milliseconds (i.e., lag two, five and eight respectively). They did so twice - once while not exposed to an odor, and once while exposed to either an odor that elicited disgust or an odor that did not - and completed a measure of disgust sensitivity. Results indicate that disgust-eliciting visual stimuli produced a greater attentional blink than neutral visual stimuli at lag two and a greater attentional blink than fear-eliciting visual stimuli at both lag two and at lag five. Neither the odor manipulations nor individual differences measures moderated this effect. We propose that visual attention is engaged for a longer period of time following disgust-eliciting stimuli because covert processes automatically initiate the evaluation of pathogen threats. The fact that state and trait pathogen avoidance do not influence this temporal attentional bias suggests that early attentional processing of pathogen cues is initiated independent from the context in which such cues are perceived.

scholarly journals Newborns’ sensitivity to speed changes as a building block for animacy perception

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Di Giorgio ◽  
Marco Lunghi ◽  
Giorgio Vallortigara ◽  
Francesca Simion
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Building Block ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Constant Speed ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Visual Preference ◽  
Reverse Sequence ◽  
Motion Speed ◽  
Speed Change ◽  
First Time

AbstractThe human visual system can discriminate between animate beings vs. inanimate objects on the basis of some kinematic cues, such as starting from rest and speed changes by self-propulsion. The ontogenetic origin of such capability is still under debate. Here we investigate for the first time whether newborns manifest an attentional bias toward objects that abruptly change their speed along a trajectory as contrasted with objects that move at a constant speed. To this end, we systematically manipulated the motion speed of two objects. An object that moves with a constant speed was contrasted with an object that suddenly increases (Experiment 1) or with one that suddenly decreases its speed (Experiment 2). When presented with a single speed change, newborns did not show any visual preference. However, newborns preferred an object that abruptly increases and then decreases its speed (Experiment 3), but they did not show any visual preference for the reverse sequence pattern (Experiment 4). Overall, results are discussed in line with the hypothesis of the existence of attentional biases in newborns that trigger their attention towards some visual cues of motion that characterized animate perception in adults.

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