Attentional Bias For Emotional Faces Research Articles

Aging and attentional biases for emotional faces.

We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and happiness. Participants saw a pair of faces, one emotional and one neutral, and then a dot probe that appeared in the location of one of the faces. In two experiments, older adults responded faster to the dot if it was presented on the same side as a neutral face than if it was presented on the same side as a negative face. Younger adults did not exhibit this attentional bias. Interactions of age and valence were also found for memory for the faces, with older adults remembering positive better than negative faces. These findings reveal that in their initial attention, older adults avoid negative information. This attentional bias is consistent with older adults' generally better emotional well-being and their tendency to remember negative less well than positive information.

Covert and overt orienting of attention to emotional faces in anxiety

Attentional biases for emotional faces were investigated in high, medium, and low anxiety groups (N = 54) using a probe detection task. Four types of facial expression (threat, sad, happy, neutral) were used to examine the specificity of the bias. Attentional bias measures were derived from manual reaction times (RTs) to probes and the direction of initial eye movement (EM) to the faces. The RT data indicated enhanced vigilance for threat rather than neutral faces in high and medium, but not low, state anxiety. The bias for negative faces appeared to be a combined function of stimulus threat value and the individual's anxiety level. The RT bias did not seem to depend on overt orienting, as many participants made few EMs. However, those who made frequent EMs to the faces showed concordance between the RT and EM bias measures, and so the RT measure of attentional bias for negative versus positive faces at 500 ms appears to provide a valid index of the direction of initial orienting to emotional stimuli. There was no evidence of an anxiety - related bias for happy faces (predicted by the emotionality hypothesis), nor a dysphoria - related bias for sad faces. However, increased dysphoria scores were associated with reduced attentiveness to happy faces.

Attentional bias for emotional faces in generalized anxiety disorder.

Recent cognitive theories propose that attentional biases cause or maintain anxiety disorders. This study had several aims: (i) to investigate such biases in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) using naturalistic, ecologically valid stimuli, namely, emotional facial expressions; (ii) to test the emotionality hypothesis by examining biases for happy as well as threat faces; and (iii) to assess the time course of the attentional bias. The dependent variable was an index of attentional bias derived from manual RTs to probe stimuli. There were four independent variables: one between-subjects variable of group (2: GAD, control), and three within-subjects variables: Type of emotional face (2: threat, happy), Stimulus duration (2: 500 ms, 1250 ms) and Half of task (2: first, second). Attentional bias was assessed with a dot probe task. The stimuli comprised photographs of threatening, happy and neutral faces, presented using two exposure durations: 500 ms and 1250 ms. Anxious patients showed greater vigilance for threatening faces relative to neutral faces, compared with normal controls. This effect did not significantly vary as a function of stimulus duration. Anxious patients also showed enhanced vigilance for happy faces, but this was only significant in the second half of the task. The study confirmed not only that GAD patients show a bias in selective attention to threat, relative to controls, but also that this bias operates for naturalistic, non-verbal stimuli. As the attentional biases for threat and happy faces appeared to develop over a different time frame, different underlying mechanisms may be responsible.

Attentional Biases for Emotional Faces

Two studies investigated emotion-related biases in selective attention for pictorial stimuli in nonclinical subjects; the stimuli included threatening, happy and neutral facial expressions. The combined results showed evidence of an emotion-related attentional bias for facial expressions (i.e. an interaction effect of dysphoria and the emotional valence of the facial expression on attentional bias). In particular, nondysphoric subjects (i.e. those with low levels of anxiety and depression) showed an attentional bias away from threatening facial expressions, relative to neutral expressions. The dysphoric subjects did not show significant evidence of attentional biases for emotional stimuli.