Attentional Bias for Threatening Facial Expressions in Anxiety: Manipulation of Stimulus Duration

Abstract The study investigated the time course of attentional biases for emotional facial expressions in high and low trait anxious individuals. Threat, happy, and neutral face stimuli were presented at two exposure durations, 500 and 1250msec, in a forced-choice reaction time (RT) version of the dot probe task. There was clear evidence of an attentional bias 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 avoidance following initial vigilance for threat in this nonclinical sample. Methodological and theoretical implications of the results are discussed.