BackgroundOccupational stress in manufacturing negatively impacts worker health and productivity. Effective tools for assessing stress levels in this high-risk industry can support interventions aimed at improving worker well-being.ObjectiveThis pilot study aims to develop and validate a dot probe task game board to measure occupational stress, integrating the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and EEG brainwave analysis.MethodsThe dot probe task measured reaction times to stress-related stimuli, with EEG recordings (focused on the AF8 electrode) taken before and after the task. A RidgeCV regression model assessed predictive factors, emphasizing stress levels measured by the PSS-10.ResultsSignificant reaction time differences validated the task's sensitivity to stress-related cognitive impairment. The RidgeCV model achieved high predictive accuracy (R² = 0.945), identifying the PSS-10 as a primary predictor of stress. EEG data provided insights into stress-induced neurobiological changes in cognitive function.ConclusionThe study supports the integration of the dot probe task in occupational health assessments, highlighting its potential to improve well-being and inform targeted interventions in manufacturing and other high-risk sectors.

Purpose The forensic mental health system constitutes a unique work environment. Forensic vigilance is often named as a core competency of forensic professionals, both in general and in relation to incident prevention. In both the definition and the model of forensic vigilance, observation is an important aspect, as the professional should observe their surroundings and note any signals of possible impeding danger or deterioration in mental state of patients; however, it has not been studied how some signals are observed, while others are ignored. This study aims to study whether forensic professionals have selective attention to notable changes in the environment or cues of patient distress. Design/methodology/approach The author investigated whether scores on the Forensic Vigilance Estimate were related to selective attention in forensic mental health-care professionals by means of a video task based on the “invisible gorilla experiment” and a Dot Probe task. In total, 131 forensic psychiatric professionals completed the video task, and 50 forensic psychiatric professionals completed the Dot Probe task. Findings No significant relationship between forensic vigilance and selective attention was found, neither on the video task nor on the Dot Probe task. The author did find a negative relationship between performance on the video task and work experience in forensic mental health care. Practical implications Possibly selective attention in the context of forensic vigilance pertains to cues of distress in patients known by the professionals. Originality/value Though often hypothesized as important, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this study represents the first effort to investigate the role of observation in forensic vigilance.

BackgroundAttentional processes toward high-calorie foods contribute to the maintenance of binge eating disorder (BED) and have been targeted by attentional modification trainings (AMTs). In this study, we quantified food-related attentional bias (AB) in individuals with BED versus control groups with normal-weight (NCG) and overweight (OCG), and evaluated whether AMT effects would persist after one week and generalize to novel stimuli.MethodsWe assessed eating pathology and AB in 135 participants (BED: n = 72; NCG: n = 32; OCG: n = 31). We used a dot-probe paradigm with concurrent eye-tracking and reaction-time measures. Sixty-one participants with BED were then randomized to four sessions of AMT or placebo training. All participants with BED underwent re-evaluations of AB and eating pathology one week after the final training session.ResultsAt baseline, the group with BED presented significantly greater AB toward high-calorie food cues than both the NCG and OCG did. One week post-training, no differential effects of AMT were observed: both the AMT and placebo groups showed modest, nonspecific reductions in initial fixation duration bias and reaction-time variability. Correlations between changes in AB toward food and eating pathology were small and not significant.ConclusionsThe presence of a food-related AB in individuals with BED was confirmed. However, AMT did not yield sustained or generalized modifications in attentional processing beyond those observed in the placebo condition. Nonspecific improvements may reflect enhanced overall attentional control or general exposure effects. Future research should isolate the active components of AMT and explore strategies to increase its ecological validity.Trial registration: Registered in the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS00012984) on 2017-11-30.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40337-025-01450-4.

Faces are special for humans. This importance is reflected in increased relative attention to faces, referred to as face attention bias (FAB). This preregistered study investigated FAB transdiagnostically in two neurodevelopmental disorders associated with social symptoms, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We assessed exogenous selective attention to faces using a dot-probe paradigm in adults with ASD, adults with ADHD, adults with both and non-clinical comparison adults. While comparison adults showed FAB as expected, adults with ASD did not. Yet, the between-group difference in FAB was not credible, contrary to our hypothesis. Critically, adults with ADHD but no ASD showed increased FAB, suggesting heightened exogenous selective attention towards faces. This increase was not reflected in oculomotor behaviour, indicating covert attentional mechanisms. Adults with comorbid ASD and ADHD did not show increased FAB. Saccades were produced faster towards face-cued targets across all groups, but no significant interaction with group emerged regarding oculomotor behaviour. These findings unveil an attentional signature in ADHD: a heightened bias for faces possibly connected to social symptoms. Furthermore, they highlight the nuanced and distinct attentional profiles in different neurodevelopmental disorders, underscoring the critical need to understand shared and distinct mechanisms of ASD and ADHD.

Background Attentional control abilities can affect a substance user’s attentional bias toward substance-related cues; however, research on this mechanism remains limited. Objectives This study used a dot-probe task to investigate the attentional processing mechanisms of smokers with different attentional control abilities for cigarette-related cues. Methods In total, 136 male smokers completed a flanker task to assess their attentional control ability. The attentional control scores of the participants were sorted from low to high, with the top 27% (36 participants) belonging to the high-attentional control group and the bottom 27% (36 participants) belonging to the low-attentional control group. Both groups then completed a dot-probe task to assess their attentional bias toward cigarette-related cues. Results The low attentional control group exhibited a significantly longer reaction time to inconsistent than to consistent trials (p < 0.001); meanwhile, the attentional bias and disengaging indices of smokers with low attentional control abilities were significantly greater than 0. No significant differences were found in the high attentional control group. Conclusion In smokers, attentional control abilities regulate attentional disengagement difficulties toward cigarette-related cues. Smokers with low attentional control ability may have an attentional bias toward cigarette-related cues due to difficulties in disengaging from cigarette-related cues, which may be an important factor in maintaining cigarette use. These results may guide approaches for the prevention of smoking and auxiliary treatment for smoking cessation.

Binge eating disorder (BED) is maintained by increased food-related incentive salience, which is reflected by an attentional bias for food. Oxytocin acutely attenuates this bias in patients with anorexia nervosa and reduces food intake in males with normal or increased body weight. However, results in individuals with BED have been inconclusive. We assessed the acute effect of oxytocin on food stimulus processing and reward-driven eating behavior in females with or without BED in a double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over study. Females with BED (n = 48) and female control participants with overweight (n = 46) or normal weight (n = 40) received intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) and, respectively, placebo, after an overnight fast and a standardized breakfast. In participants with a natural menstrual cycle, sessions were scheduled during consecutive luteal phases. Participants completed a food-related dot-probe task with concurrent eye tracking and a bogus taste test measuring snack intake. Oxytocin compared to placebo increased dwell time bias on food stimuli in the BED relative to the overweight control group, in which this effect was reversed. Contrary to our hypothesis, oxytocin increased calorie intake across groups. Exploratory analyses indicated that the latter effect focused on females taking hormonal contraception. These results indicate disorder- and, respectively, sex-specific effects of oxytocin on food-related incentive salience and food intake and point to a role of oxytocin in binge eating pathology. They moreover suggest that sex hormones determine the acute effect of oxytocin on eating behavior in females.

Background/Objectives: Attentional bias toward drug-related cues is a characteristic of drug dependence and plays a detrimental role during drug withdrawal. The present study examined attentional bias in female individuals with drug dependence. We focused on its temporal and spatial characteristics using drug-related and negative emotion dot-probe tasks. Methods: Fifty-one female participants with drug dependence (mean age = 24.71 ± 7.58 years) took part in the study. These participants were primarily dependent on methamphetamine and novel psychoactive substances. They completed tasks with two cue exposure durations (500 ms and 2000 ms) under three spatial conditions: match, mismatch, and neutral. Results: Results indicated that a global attentional bias toward drug-related cues, rather than a location-specific bias, was evident during the short cue exposure (500 ms), regardless of spatial alignment (ps < 0.05), whereas no bias was observed during the sustained attention stage (2000 ms). No attentional bias was observed for negative emotional stimuli, highlighting the stimulus-specific nature of this effect. Conclusions: These findings further support the incentive sensitization model of addiction, showing that interference from drug-related items, regardless of the specific orientation of attention, primarily drives short cue exposure attentional bias in females.

BACKGROUNDAlthough extensive research has investigated attentional biases based on the looming vulnerability model of anxiety, the characteristics of attentional biases in individuals with looming cognitive styles (LCS) remain incompletely elucidated. No prior eye-tracking studies have examined the spatiotemporal dynamics of their threat-related attentional preferences.AIMTo investigate the nature and temporal pattern of attentional biases toward threat stimuli in individuals exhibiting different levels of LCS using eye-tracking technology.METHODSA total of 212 participants were stratified according to their Looming Maladaptive Style Questionnaire scores. From the high and low scoring subgroups, 35 participants were randomly selected for an eye-tracking experiment using a classic dot-probe paradigm featuring threat and neutral images. Four eye-tracking metrics, including first fixation latency, first fixation duration, total fixation duration, and fixation count, were analyzed to assess detection speed, attentional orienting, initial maintenance/avoidance, and overall engagement.RESULTSDistinct attentional bias patterns were observed between high and low LCS groups. High LCS individuals exhibited a vigilance-avoidance pattern characterized by initial vigilance toward threat stimuli (evidenced by faster detection and preferential orienting), followed by attentional avoidance, alongside sustained attention maintenance to threat.CONCLUSIONThese findings reveal a temporal dissociation between early vigilance and later avoidance during threat processing in high LCS individuals, providing novel empirical evidence to refine models of cognitive vulnerability and attentional dynamics in threat perception.

Negative or threatening stimuli capture attention. However, it remains unclear whether this phenomenon is best conceived as bottom-up (i.e., salience-driven) or top-down (i.e., goal-directed) instead. To address this question, we conducted two experiments using a previously validated dot-probe task (DPT) where physical salience (i.e., abrupt luminance change) and negative emotion (i.e., fearful face) competed with one another for attention selection (Experiment 1, n = 40) or negative (but also positive) emotion could be used as an endogenous cue by the participants to guide this process (Experiment 2, n = 39). Eye-tracking was used to ascertain that both cue and target were processed with peripheral vision. In Experiment 1, we found that negative emotion and physical salience both drove spatial attention in a bottom-up manner, yet their effects were under-additive, suggesting that they could mutually inhibit each other. Moreover, the results of Experiment 2 showed that fear, unlike happiness, could bias spatial attention in a top‑down manner, but only when participants were aware of the association created between the emotional cue and target’s location, leading to an enhanced validity effect in the high probability condition but an invalidity effect in the low probability one. Combined together, these novel findings suggest that negative value does not influence the priority map independently from physical salience and goal but depending on the specific combination of cues available for attention selection in the environment, it acts either as an exogenous or endogenous cue, thereby revealing an enhanced flexibility for it.

Pediatric anxiety disorders are common and predict adult psychopathology, yet current treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), produce lasting remission in less than 50% of affected youths. To support the search for improved, mechanistically grounded interventions, this study evaluated neural efficiency, defined as similarity in functional connectivity between a threat task and rest, as a potential biomarker. The study evaluated neural efficiency in relation to anxiety diagnosis and treatment response. The authors compared 103 youths with an anxiety disorder diagnosis (mean age, 12.5 years [SD=2.91], 62% female) to 103 youths with no psychiatric diagnosis (mean age, 13.4 years [SD=2.58], 53% female). Participants completed functional MRI while resting and during a dot-probe task with threatening faces. Neural efficiency was calculated as partial correlations between intrinsic and task-related functional connectivity patterns across the whole brain. Four-month test-retest reliability as well as relationships with anxiety and response to exposure-based CBT were examined. Neural efficiency demonstrated satisfactory test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient=0.65) in healthy youths over a period of 11 to 18 weeks. Neural efficiency was significantly negatively related to anxiety as both a diagnostic category (t=2.62, d=0.29) and a symptom dimension (r=-0.18). Although it did not change after CBT, lower neural efficiency at baseline was significantly associated with poorer treatment response in a subset of 80 anxious youths who underwent CBT (β=-11.88, χ2=9.20). Neural efficiency, measured as network reconfiguration between rest and task, holds promise as a biomarker in pediatric anxiety. Its association with CBT response suggests that it might aid in patient stratification and offer a target for interventions aimed at enhancing CBT efficacy.

Pain in focus: How persistent pain disrupts the attentional bias towards pain-related information.

The biophilia hypothesis posits that humans have an innate affinity for nature, with natural landscapes effortlessly capturing their attention, and a tendency to seek nature. The animate monitoring hypothesis suggests that humans have evolved to quickly detect and respond to animals for survival. The plant awareness disparity hypothesis argues that people notice plants less than animals due to perceptual biases and preferences. Based on these hypotheses, it was predicted that people’s visual attention would be superior towards animals, plants, and manufactured objects, in that order. This study investigated the hierarchy of visual attention towards animals (birds, mammals and humans), plants (fruit), and manufactured objects (vehicles) using a dot-probe task framework. The findings revealed no significant differences in reaction time or attentional bias for animal or plant stimuli. In contrast, perceptual processing was inhibited when viewing a vehicle and attentional avoidance occurred, resulting in slower reactions than to animals or plants. These findings offer partial support for the proposed hierarchy of visual attention, suggesting that while natural stimuli such as animals and plants receive comparable attention, some manufactured objects may elicit perceptual avoidance.

IntroductionThe current study examined impulsivity and compulsivity in individuals with compulsive buying (CB) and those without CB.MethodsThe sample consisted of 120 participants (97 women, 23 men), undergraduate psychology students (age: M = 24.5, SD = 3.9). Participants were divided into two groups: individuals who scored high on a compulsive buying scale (CBS) and individuals who scored low on the CBS. Questionnaires measured impulsivity (Barratt Impulsiveness Scale) and compulsivity (Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale), along with the computerized experiential delay discounting task (EDT), response inhibition (Go/No-Go), and selective attention (Dot-Probe). ResultsThe questionnaires indicated higher levels of impulsivity and compulsivity in the experimental group. Secondly, compulsive buyers exhibited higher error rates in the No-Go commission condition during the second part of the Go/No-Go task, indicating an impairment in response inhibition. No differences were found in delay discounting or selective attention measured by the Dot-Probe task. Additionally, compulsive buying scores positively correlated with state anxiety scores. In a following experiment, 40 students were divided into two groups: individuals with high CBS scores and individuals with low CBS scores. They performed a simulated shopping experiment using the ASOS shopping website, with their responses recorded on Zoom. Compulsive buyers were quicker to add items to the shopping cart and spent more money than non-compulsive buyers. Compulsive buying scores were also associated with impulsivity and sensation-seeking scores. Impulsivity, but not sensation-seeking, contributed to the variance of compulsive buying scores. DiscussionThis study showed impaired inhibition with a higher cognitive load on the Go/No-Go task in compulsive buyers. Secondly, there was evidence for impulsivity indicated by negative correlations between compulsive buying scores and reaction times on the in the No-Go commission condition on the Go/No-Go task and on the Dot-Probe task. Finally, in a simulation of real-life shopping, compulsive buyers were faster to choose items, and they paid more for them. This evidence suggests that the effects of compulsive buying on cognitive function are often subtle and a real-life simulation that uniquely demonstrates this impairment.

ABSTRACT The potential relationship between cognitive control pattern and attentional bias in individuals with high social anxiety (HSAs) remains unclear. This study uses the Dual Mechanisms of Control framework to investigate the impact of cognitive control patterns on attentional bias in HSAs. 55 individuals with low social anxiety (LSAs) and 67 HSAs completed the AX-continuous performance task and dot-probe task. Compared to LSAs, HSAs demonstrated lower accuracy on BX and AY trial and a reduced discrimination index, indicating deficits in both proactive and reactive control. Notably, moderation analyses revealed that for those with higher proactive control, higher LSAS scores were associated with faster disengagement from threat-related social cues, while for those with lower proactive control, LSAS scores were unrelated to disengagement. Similarly, higher LSAS scores were associated with stronger attentional engagement with threat cues among individuals with higher reactive control. However, this association was eliminated among individuals with lower reactive control. This study is the first to reveal a pattern of co-impairment in both proactive and reactive control systems, alongside an independent moderation of attentional bias in HSAs, providing a more refined theoretical framework for targeted interventions.

Measuring attentional bias using the dot-probe task in young women: Psychometric properties and feasibility of response-based computations, dwell time, and the N2pc component.

Attend to the positive while feeling anxious: The effect of state anxiety on the effectiveness of Attentional Bias Modification.

Opioid misuse detection from cognitive and physiological data with temporal fusion deep learning.

Attentional disengagement difficulties toward game-related social reward and avoidance toward real-life social reward among individuals with Internet gaming disorder.

IntroductionAlthough numerous findings support the triggering effect of drug-related cues on drug-seeking behavior among addicts, there is a paucity of studies investigating whether attentional bias toward these cues can be moderated by social factors. The present study aimed to examine the influence of social situation cues and negative smoking outcome expectancies on attentional bias among smokers.MethodsIn study 1, 36 smokers and 34 nonsmokers completed a modified dot-probe task that incorporated social situation cues as priming stimuli. In study 2 (N = 58), a sentence construction task was introduced to further explore how negative smoking outcome expectancies affect attentional bias influenced by social situation cues.ResultsStudy 1 found that attentional bias toward smoking-related cues was more pronounced in the smoking social situation cue condition than in the non-smoking social situation cue condition. Study 2 further found that when negative smoking outcome expectancies were activated, attentional bias toward smoking-related cues might be reduced in the smoking social situation cue condition.DiscussionThese results indicated that attentional bias could be sharpened not only by social situation cues but also by negative smoking outcome expectancies. This study provides preliminary evidence concerning the potential flexibility of attentional biases toward drug-related cues among individuals facing addiction issues.

Using the dot-probe paradigm, previous research has demonstrated that women on average show attentional biases towards underweight bodies. However, little research has used these paradigms to examine the malleability of such biases. Here, we examined whether a single session of attention bias modification training, in which participants were trained to attend to healthy-weight bodies, reduced attentional orientation towards underweight bodies and improved body satisfaction. One hundred and twenty-one female participants were randomly assigned to either an experimental group in which they were trained to attend to healthy weight bodies or a control group (with no manipulation). Participants' body satisfaction was measured at two phases, before and following attentional training. We found no changes to attentional biases or body satisfaction across both groups. Dot-probe attention bias modification tasks may not be able to modify body satisfaction and attention biases towards healthy-weight bodies following a single training session. Future research is encouraged to consider alternative attentional modification paradigms to modify pathological body image.