ATTENTIONAL BIAS FOR THREATENING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS IN ANXIETY - MANIPULATION OF STIMULUS-DURATION

The study investigated the time course of attentional biases for emoti onal facial expressions in high and low trait anxious individuals. Thr eat, happy, and neutral face stimuli were presented at two exposure du rations, 500 and 1250msec, in a forced-choice reaction time (RT) versi on of the dot probe task. There was clear evidence of an attentional b ias favouring threatening facial expressions, but not emotional faces in general, in high trait anxiety. Increased dysphoria was associated with a tendency to avoid happy faces. No evidence was found of avoidan ce following initial vigilance for threat in this nonclinical sample. Methodological and theoretical implications of the results are discuss ed.