We aimed to illuminate the theorized, yet empirically elusive, connection between covert and overt attentional processes subserving attentional biases (AB). We found that covert and overt attentional processes were each expressed dynamically, fluctuating from moment-to-moment between phases of (over)engagement and phases of avoidance of threat stimuli. The key features of the temporal dynamics of covert and overt attentional processes were significantly correlated. Moreover, the real-time, dynamic expressions of overt and covert attentional processes were significantly coupled from trial-to-trial; and voluntary inhibition of overt attention decoupled their connection in time. In contrast to this dynamic process perspective on AB, when quantified through the decades-old paradigm conceptualizing AB as a static trait-like phenomenon, covert and overt attentional processes demonstrated (seemingly) no association and poor psychometrics. We discuss the implications of the findings for better understanding the nature of AB, its measurement, bio-psycho-behavioral correlates, and clinical modification. (PsycINFO Database Record

Accordingly, research has focused on the promise of therapeutically targeting BEA and, in particular, BEA to threatening stimuli as a means to target problems with anxiety (e.g., MacLeod & Clarke, 2015). Experimental and clinical study of BEA modification has focused

Our mind’s eye and the role of internal attention in mental life and suffering has intrigued scholars for centuries. Yet, experimental study of internal attention has been elusive due to our limited capacity to control the timing and content of internal stimuli. We thus developed the Simulated Thoughts Paradigm (STP) to experimentally deliver own-voice thought stimuli that simulate the content and experience of thinking and thereby experimental study of internal attentional processes. In independent experiments (N = 122) integrating STP into established cognitive-experimental tasks, we found and replicated evidence that emotional reactivity to negative thoughts predicts difficulty disengaging internal attention from, as well as biased selective internal attention of, those thoughts; these internal attention processes predict cognitive vulnerability (e.g., negative repetitive thinking) which thereby predict anxiety and depression. Proposed methods and findings may have implications for the study of information processing and attention in mental health broadly and models of internal attentional (dys)control in cognitive vulnerability and mental health more specifically.

No abstract

By selecting from a sea of potential environmental inputs in a manner that is context sensitive, flexible, and goal relevant, attention enables adaptive pursuit of reward and escape from threat (Vuilleumier, 2005). Accordingly, dysregulation in attentional processing of emotional information, commonly referred to as attentional bias (AB), has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of prevalent forms of maladaptation, including anxiety, depression, and addiction, and thus is a promising intervention target (Heeren, De Raedt, Koster, & Philippot, 2013; Van Bockstaele et al., 2014). Yet the field has faced growing concerns about the weak psychometric properties of cognitive-experimental measures of AB, mixed evidence of the role of AB in psychopathology, and mixed evidence of efforts to experimentally and clinically modify AB (Bar