Influence of emotional task relevancy on the temporal dynamic of attentional bias in people with high-trait anxiety

ABSTRACT

It is unknown whether high-trait anxiety (HTA) individuals show facilitated attention or impaired attentional disengagement. In the present study, we have manipulated emotion and task relevance to explore the temporal dynamic of attentional bias in an HTA group via emotional attentional blink (EAB) and emotion-induced blindness (EIB). The results showed that the attentional blink effect was greater in the negative compared to neutral condition. When emotional stimulation was task-irrelevant at lag6, this enhanced effect was only present for the HTA group, indicating impaired attentional disengagement. However, when emotional stimulation was task-relevant at lag4, the enhanced attentional blink was absent for HTA but still present for LTA until lag8, suggesting facilitated attention for HTA. Thus, task relevancy of emotional distractor appears to influence attention biases in HTA individuals. In addition, individual characteristics modulate the magnitude and time window of the attentional blink in the context of EIB and EAB tasks.

KEYWORDS:

• Trait anxiety
• attentional bias
• attentional blink
• task relevance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Haijun Duan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8705-2716

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 31700976]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities: [Grant Number GK201902011,2019TS140]; Key Project for Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Towards Basic Education Quality at Bejing Normal University: [Grant Number 2018-05-009-BZPK01, 2020-05-009-BZPK01]; Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China: [Grant Number 16YJC190004]; Social Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province: [Grant Number 13N151].