Attentional Biases for Emotional Faces in Trait Anxious Participants: The Effect of the Exposure Duration

摘要

This study investigated the effect of the exposure duration on the association between trait anxiety and attentional bias for emotional faces, such as angry, sad, and happy, using a dot probe task. A factorial experimental design was used with exposure duration and emotional valence as within-groups factors and trait anxiety as a between-groups factor. 72 college students recruited from two universities completed a trait anxiety inventory and then were directed to a dot probe task. In front of a computer screen, participants viewed an emotional face paired with a neutral face of the same individual for a short (300~500 ms) or long (800~1000 ms) duration, and responded to a blue dot that was on the location of an emotional face (emotional trials) or the opposite location (neutral trials). The attentional bias score for each emotion was calculated by subtracting participants’ median reaction times for emotional trials from neutral trials. The results indicated that when the exposure duration of pictures was short, high-trait anxious participants showed a significantly larger attentional bias score for angry face than low-trait anxious participants. However, there was no difference in the attentional bias for the angry face between high- and low-anxious participants when the exposure duration was long. In conclusion, the long exposure duration of emotional faces could cause a suppression of attentional biases for angry faces in high-trait anxious participants. The results were accounted for in terms of the interaction between bottom-up and top-down processes.