K. Mogg et al., ATTENTIONAL BIAS TO THREAT - ROLES OF TRAIT ANXIETY, STRESSFUL EVENTS, AND AWARENESS, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology, 47(4), 1994, pp. 841-864
Attentional biases for threat stimuli were assessed in high and low tr
ait anxious subjects (n = 66) using a probe detection task. To examine
the effects of trait anxiety and situational stressors, each subject
was tested three times: Under no stress, laboratory-induced stress, an
d examination-induced stress. To evaluate the role of awareness, half
the word stimuli were presented very briefly (14 msec) and masked, and
the other half were presented for 500 msec without a mask. Results sh
owed that high trait anxious subjects under exam stress showed an atte
ntional bias towards unmasked threat stimuli compared with low trait s
ubjects. This effect was not found under lab-induced stress, suggestin
g that the attentional bias for unmasked threat in high trait subjects
may be a function of a prolonged stressor, rather than a transient in
crease in state anxiety. The results from the masked exposure conditio
n were not predicted; high trait anxious subjects shifted attention to
wards the spatial location of threat words despite lack of awareness o
f their lexical content, but this bias was only apparent in the no-str
ess condition. The results are discussed in relation to recent cogniti
ve theories of anxiety.