Attentional bias to angry faces using the dot-probe task? It depends when you look for it

Abstract

A number of studies using the dot-probe task now report the existence of attentional biases to angry faces in participants who rate highly on scales of anxiety; however, no equivalent bias has been observed in non-anxious populations, despite evidence to the contrary from studies using other tasks. One reason for this discrepancy may be that researchers using the dot-probe task have rarely investigated any effects which might emerge earlier than 500 ms following presentation of the threat-related faces.Accordingly, in the current study we presented pairs of face stimuli with emotional and neutral expressions and probed the allocation of attention to these stimuli for presentation times of 100ms and 500ms. Results showed that at 100ms there was an attentional bias towards the location of the relatively threatening stimulus (the angry face in angry/neutral pairs and the neutral face in neutral/happy pairs) and this pattern reversed by 500ms. Comparisons of RT scores with an appropriate baseline suggested that the early bias toward threatening faces may actually arise through inhibition of the relatively least threatening member of a face pair rather than through facilitation of, or vigilance towards, the more threatening stimulus. However the mechanisms governing the observed biases are interpreted, these data provide evidence that probing for the location of spatial attention at 500ms is not necessarily indicative of the initial allocation of attention between competing emotional facial stimuli.

Attentional biases in social anxiety: An investigation using the inattentional blindness paradigm

“…In contrast, at 1,250ms, this effect disappeared. Similarly, Cooper and Langton (2006) with a normal student sample found evidence for attentional hypervigilant towards threatening social cues for the stimulus duration of 100ms. However, this pattern was revered by 500ms.…”

“…As Clark and Wells (1995) hypothesized, threatening words may assess mental preoccupation, whereas threatening faces may measure attention to actual social cues. Third, the standard stimulus duration (i.e., 500ms) of the dot-probe paradigm may need to be shortened (e.g., 100ms; Cooper & Langton, 2006) in order to keep earlier attentional processes (e.g., hypervigilance) from being masked by later attentional avoidance (see Garner, Mogg, & Bradley, 2006;Mogg, Bradley, DeBono, & Painter, 1997). Fourth, attentional biases in non-clinical samples in response to emotional faces are more likely to be observed under conditions in which social anxiety is induced prior to the attentional bias assessment.…”

“…There are also some data suggesting that the pattern of dot-probe paradigm findings may vary as a function of the length of stimuli duration (Mogg, Philippot, & Bradley, 2004;Cooper & Langton, 2006). Mogg, Philippot, and Bradley (2004) compared individuals with SAD and normal controls using a modified dot-probe task, in which happy-neutral and angry-neutral face pairs are displayed for either 500ms or 1250ms.…”

“…Nevertheless, even with the picture stimuli consisting of emotional faces, findings are quite inconsistent. Cooper and Langton (2006) pointed out that dot-probe data could be interested in at least three ways: (a) vigilance towards one particular stimulus, (b) inhibition of the other pair, or (c) both. Further investigation is required to understand the precise nature of mechanisms involved in the modified dotprobe paradigm leading to differential speed of dot-detection.…”

The influence of variations in eating disorder-related symptoms on processing of emotional faces in a non-clinical female sample: An eye-tracking study

“…Studies using the dot-probe task utilise different presentation times to try and distinguish between these two processes. However, this task only provides a 'snap shot' of the location of attention at a given moment in time, which is a notable limitation as the time chosen for this sampling can influence the direction of bias observed (Cooper and Langton, 2006). Eye-tracking technology enables the continuous measurement of eye-movements using a high temporal resolution, thus it is able to overcome the limitations of previous studies.…”