ATTENTIONAL BIASES FOR NEGATIVE INFORMATION IN INDUCED AND NATURALLY-OCCURRING DYSPHORIA

Two studies investigated the relationship between attentional biases f or negative information and dysphoria-both induced (Study 1) and natur ally occurring (Study 2). in a modified dot probe task a series of wor d pairs was presented, and Ss responded to probes that replaced one of the words in each pair. The stimuli included depression-related, anxi ety-related and neutral words. To examine the time course of the atten tional biases, there were three exposure durations of the word pairs: 14 ms (+ 186 ms mask); 500 ms and 1000 ms. In Study I, the depressed m ood induction procedure was associated with greater vigilance for depr ession-related words at 500 ms. with a similar trend at 1000 ms. In St udy 2, measures of depressed mood and vulnerability correlated positiv ely with vigilance for negative words in the 1000 ms condition. There was no evidence from either study that depressed mood was associated w ith a pre-conscious bias for negative words (i.e. in the 14 ms masked exposure condition). However, this pre-conscious bias was associated w ith high trait anxiety in Study 2, consistent with previous research. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical and empirical wor k on cognitive biases in clinical and non-clinical anxiety and depress ion. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.