Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Cogn Emot. 2024 Mar;38(2):217-231. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2023.2283014. Epub 2024 Feb 6.
Two recent articles [Gronchi et al., 2018. Automatic and controlled attentional orienting in the elderly: A dual-process view of the positivity effect. , , 229-234; Wirth & Wentura, 2020. It occurs after all: Attentional bias towards happy faces in the dot-probe task. , (5), 2463-2481] report attentional biases for happy facial expressions in the dot-probe paradigm, albeit in different directions. While Wirth and Wentura report a bias towards happy expressions, Gronchi et al. found a reversed effect. A striking difference between the studies was the task performed by the participants. While in Wirth and Wentura, participants performed a discrimination task, they performed a location task in Gronchi et al. In Experiment 1, we directly compared the two versions of the dot-probe paradigm. With the discrimination task, the bias towards happy faces was replicated. However, the location task yielded a null effect. In Experiment 2, we found a cueing effect with an abrupt onset cue in both tasks. However, for the location task a congruence-sequence effect (a typical characteristic of response-priming processes) occurred. This result suggests that in the location task, attentional processes are confounded with response-priming processes. We recommend to generally use discrimination tasks.
两篇近期文献[Gronchi 等人，2018. 老年人的自动和受控注意导向：正性效应的双过程观点。心理科学，229-234；Wirth 和 Wentura，2020. 毕竟会发生：在点探测任务中对快乐面孔的注意偏向。心理科学，（5），2463-2481]报告了在点探测范式中对快乐面部表情的注意偏向，尽管方向不同。虽然 Wirth 和 Wentura 报告了对快乐表情的偏向，但 Gronchi 等人发现了相反的效果。这两项研究之间的一个显著区别是参与者所执行的任务。在 Wirth 和 Wentura 的研究中，参与者执行了辨别任务，而在 Gronchi 等人的研究中，他们执行了定位任务。在实验 1 中，我们直接比较了点探测范式的两种版本。使用辨别任务，对快乐面孔的偏向得到了复制。然而，定位任务则没有效果。在实验 2 中，我们在两个任务中都发现了具有突然起始线索的提示效应。然而，对于定位任务，出现了一致序列效应（响应启动过程的典型特征）。这一结果表明，在定位任务中，注意过程与响应启动过程混淆在一起。我们建议普遍使用辨别任务。
