Mogg Karin, Bradley Brendan P
Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
Behav Res Ther. 2002 Dec;40(12):1403-14. doi: 10.1016/s0005-7967(02)00017-7.
The aims of the study were two-fold: to examine whether previous evidence of a pre-attentive bias for masked threat faces in anxious individuals could be replicated, and to assess the relationship between the predicted bias and measures of trait and social anxiety. Pairs of face stimuli were briefly displayed and masked in a modified version of the visual probe task. Results indicated that high anxious individuals were faster to respond to probes occurring in the spatial location of masked threat rather than neutral faces; consistent with their attention being automatically captured by sub-threshold threat cues. Furthermore, this vigilance effect for masked threat faces appeared to be primarily a function of social anxiety and social avoidance, rather than trait anxiety. It was also more apparent when threat faces were presented in the left visual field, suggestive of right hemisphere involvement.
一是检验之前关于焦虑个体对被掩盖的威胁面孔存在前注意偏向的证据是否能够被复制，二是评估预测的偏向与特质焦虑和社交焦虑测量指标之间的关系。在视觉探测任务的一个修改版本中，短暂呈现并掩盖成对的面部刺激。结果表明，高焦虑个体对出现在被掩盖的威胁面孔而非中性面孔空间位置的探测刺激反应更快；这与他们的注意力被阈下威胁线索自动捕捉一致。此外，对被掩盖的威胁面孔的这种警觉效应似乎主要是社交焦虑和社交回避的作用，而非特质焦虑。当威胁面孔出现在左视野时，这种效应也更明显，提示右半球参与其中。
