Detailed study of selective attention towards the secured and threatening stimuli in anxiety issues: consideration of temporal waning

作者：Leleu Vincent^*; Douilliez Celine; Rusinek Stephane

来源：CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-REVUE CANADIENNE DE PSYCHOLOGIE EXPERIMENTALE, 2014, 68(1): 29-37.

DOI：10.1037/cep0000006

• anxiety
• attentional disengagement
• safety-related and threatening words
• attentional control

The present study investigated the time course of attention to safety-related and threatening words in High Trait Anxious (HTA) and Low Trait Anxious (LTA) individuals. HTA and LTA individuals performed a dot probe task with three exposure durations: 100, 500 and 1250 ms. Results indicated a difficulty in disengaging from threatening word in the 1250 ms condition in HTA individuals. Thus anxious individuals seem to have a difficulty to disengage from threatening information during the strategic processing of the word. These results support the hypothesis that impaired attentional disengagement could prevent individuals from responding to stressful situations in an adaptive way. Moreover, the lack of attentional bias toward safety-related informations supports the hypothesis that anxiety is linked to a threat-specific processing. Further research should explore whether attentional control processes can regulate the impaired attentional disengagement.

• 出版日期2014-3