SELECTIVE ATTENTION EVIDENCED BY PICTORIAL AND LINGUISTIC STROOP TASKS

Attentional biases to threatening stimuli are frequently demonstrated in anxious subjects by means of various linguistic experimental tasks. We argue that, for reasons of both ecological validity and accessibil ity of affective information, a pictorial task would be a more appropr iate test of attentional bias in subjects with spider phobia. Before a nd after a two-session exposure treatment, 25 subjects with spider pho bia were presented with a combined pictorial/linguistic Stroop task. A s hypothesized, subjects with spider phobia showed an attentional bias for pictorial and linguistic spider-related stimuli and both attentio nal biases were strongly reduced after treatment. In contrast to our e xpectations, pictorial stimuli generally resulted in smaller attention al biases than linguistic stimuli. A post hoc ''planation is discussed .