Selective Processing of Threatening Words in Anxiety: The Role of Awareness

Underlying differences in resting-state activity metrics related to sensitivity to punishment

Reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) of personality establishes the punishment sensitivity trait as a source of variation in defensive avoidance/approach behaviors. These individual differences reflect dissimilar sensitivity and reactivity of the fight-flight-freeze and behavioral inhibition systems (FFFS/BIS). The sensitivity to punishment (SP) scale has been widely used in personality research aimed at studying the activity of these systems. Structural and functional neuroimaging studies have confirmed the core biological correlates of FFFS/BIS in humans. Nonetheless, some brain functional features derived from resting-state blood-oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) activity and its association with the punishment sensitivity dimension remain unclear. This relationship would shed light on stable neural activity patterns linked to anxiety-like behaviors and anxiety predisposition. In this study, we analyzed functional activity metrics "at rest" [e.g., regional homogeneity (ReHo) and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF)] and their relationship with SP in key FFFS/BIS regions (e.g., amygdala, hippocampus, and periaqueductal gray) in a sample of 127 healthy adults. Our results revealed a significant negative correlation between the fALFF within all these regions and the scores on SP. Our findings suggest aberrant neural activity (lower fALFF) within the brain's defense system in participants with high trait anxiety, which in turn could reflect lower FFFS/BIS activation thresholds. These neurally-located differences could lead to pathological fear/anxiety behaviors arising from the FFFS and BIS.

Trait Anxiety Influences Negative Affect-modulated Distribution of Visuospatial Attention

Visuospatial attention allows humans to selectively gate and prioritize visual (including salient, emotional) information for efficiently navigating natural visual environments. As emotions have been known to influence attentional performance, we asked if emotions also modulate the spatial distribution of visual attention and whether any such effect was further associated with individual differences in anxiety. Participants (n = 28) discriminated the orientation of target Gabor patches co-presented with distractors, speedily and accurately. The key manipulation was randomly presenting a task-irrelevant face emotion prime briefly (50 ms), conveying Neutral/Disgust/Scrambled (Null) emotion signal 150 ms preceding the target patches. We calculated attention gradient (change in negative inverse attentional efficiency with unit change in distance from the source of emotion signal) as a metric to answer our questions. Specifically, the Disgust signal modulated the direction of attention gradients differentially in individuals with varying degrees of trait - anxiety, such that the gradients correlated negatively with individual trait-anxiety scores. This implies spatial shifts in Disgust-signalled visual attention with varying trait - anxiety levels. Neutral yielded attention gradients comparable to Scrambled, implying no specific effect of this signal and there was no association with anxiety levels in both. No correlation was observed between state - anxiety and the emotion-cued attention gradients. In sum, the results suggest that individual trait - anxiety levels influence the effect of negative and physiologically arousing emotion signals (e.g., Disgust) on the spatial distribution of visual attention. The findings could be of relevance for understanding biases in visual behaviour underlying affective states and disorders.

Test anxiety, evaluative stress, and susceptibility to distraction from threat

Examinations are perhaps one of the main methods of assessment in education. Unfortunately, there are some individuals who are so fearful of such events that performance is impaired. Test anxiety is believed to be the trait that predisposes individuals to react negatively to examinations and tests. One way in which it is believed that test anxiety affects performance is by increasing susceptibility to distraction from task‐irrelevant material. However, few studies have directly investigated this impairment. An experiment was therefore conducted to investigate susceptibility to distraction in high and low test‐anxious students. The task used was based on one developed by Mathews, May, Mogg and Eysenck (1990), which distinguishes between focused attention and selective search. In order to determine whether a specific susceptibility to distraction exists, the distractors were varied in terms of valence and relevance to examinations. Since test anxiety is a situation‐specific trait, an evaluation‐related stressor was used to trigger test‐anxious reactions. A specific susceptibility to distraction from threat was found amongst high test‐anxious participants who received the evaluation‐related stressor. However, this effect was only found when participants were using focused attention. This suggests that the disturbed performance often found to be associated with test anxiety might be due to an inability to ignore threatening material when attempting to focus attentional resources. These results are discussed in light of current theories of test anxiety and implications for educational practice. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Emotional faces guide the eyes in the absence of awareness

The ability to act quickly to a threat is a key skill for survival. Under awareness, threat-related emotional information, such as an angry or fearful face, has not only perceptual advantages but also guides rapid actions such as eye movements. Emotional information that is suppressed from awareness still confers perceptual and attentional benefits. However, it is unknown whether suppressed emotional information can directly guide actions, or whether emotional information has to enter awareness to do so. We suppressed emotional faces from awareness using continuous flash suppression and tracked eye gaze position. Under successful suppression, as indicated by objective and subjective measures, gaze moved towards fearful faces, but away from angry faces. Our findings reveal that: (1) threat-related emotional stimuli can guide eye movements in the absence of visual awareness; (2) threat-related emotional face information guides distinct oculomotor actions depending on the type of threat conveyed by the emotional expression.

Response inhibition or evaluation of danger? An event-related potential study regarding the origin of the motor interference effect from dangerous objects

Previous studies have identified an interference effect from dangerous objects on prepared responses. However, its origin remains arguable. This study investigated the neural processes of this motor interference effect. The design adopted a motor priming paradigm mixed with a Go/NoGo task. Pictures of a left or right hand were used as primes, and green (Go signal) or red (NoGo signal) circles superimposed on dangerous or safe objects were used as targets. Participants were instructed to prepare the corresponding key press using the hand that was consistent with the handedness of the prime and not to execute until a Go signal appeared. Behavioral results indicated longer reaction times and a trend that participants made more errors for the dangerous condition than for the safe condition in the Go trials. However, the difference between the error rates for the dangerous and safe conditions did not emerge in the NoGo trials. Event-related potential analysis revealed a similar effect on the P3 component, which may reflect an assignment of cognitive resources to evaluate danger. More positive parietal P3 amplitudes were identified in response to the dangerous condition in the Go trials. However, the difference in the P3 amplitudes between the dangerous and safe conditions was not significant in the NoGo trials. Together, the motor interference effect from dangerous objects may originate from the danger evaluations. Furthermore, differences between the dangerous and safe conditions also emerged in the P1, posterior N1, P2, and posterior N2 components; the possible processes that underlie these components were discussed.

Attentional processing of faces in ASD: a Dot-Probe study

The present study used the Dot-Probe paradigm to explore attentional allocation to faces compared with non-social images in high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing controls. There was no evidence of attentional bias in either group when stimuli were presented at individually calculated sub-threshold levels. However, at supra-threshold presentation (200 ms), a face bias was found for control participants but not for those with ASD. These results add to evidence of reduced social interest in ASD, relative to controls, and further demonstrate when atypical social processing arises in the attentional time course.

Attentional bias, distractibility and short-term memory in anxiety

Cognitive effects of anxiety have been amply documented. Anxiety has been linked with an attentional bias toward threat, distractibility, and reductions in short-term memory (STM) capacity. These three functions have rarely been investigated jointly and permeability may account for some of the effects documented. In this experiment, we examine these three cognitive functions using one verbal and one visuospatial task. In the irrelevant speech paradigm, participants had to remember strings of letters while irrelevant neutral or threatening speech was presented. In the visuospatial sandwich paradigm, participants were asked to remember sequences of visuospatial targets sometimes presented within irrelevant distracters. We examined the links between state anxiety, worry, and indices of attentional bias toward threat, distractibility from neutral stimuli, and STM capacity. Results show that state anxiety was uniquely linked with impairments in STM while worry was more particularly related to distractibility, independently from permeability between the different cognitive functions. Attentional bias toward threat was linked with variance common to both anxiety and worry. An examination of clinical and non-clinical subgroups suggests that subjective threat perception and attentional bias toward threat are features that are particularly characteristic of clinical levels of anxiety. Our findings confirm the important links between anxiety and basic cognitive functions.

Effects of 7.5% CO(2) inhalation on allocation of spatial attention to facial cues of emotional expression

Increased vigilance to threat-related stimuli is thought to be a core cognitive feature of anxiety. We sought to investigate the cognitive impact of experimentally induced anxiety, by means of a 7.5% CO(2) challenge, which acts as an unconditioned anxiogenic stimulus, on attentional bias for positive and negative facial cues of emotional expression in the dot-probe task. In two experiments we found robust physiological and subjective effects of the CO(2) inhalation consistent with the claim that the procedure reliably induces anxiety. Data from the dot-probe task demonstrated an attentional bias to emotional facial expressions compared with neutral faces regardless of valence (happy, angry, and fearful). These attentional effects, however, were entirely inconsistent in terms of their relationship with induced anxiety. We conclude that the previously reported poor reliability of this task is the most parsimonious explanation for our conflicting findings and that future research should develop a more reliable paradigm for measuring attentional bias in this field.

Repetition blindness for faces reflects identity coding but not emotion coding

Repetition blindness for visually presented stimuli occurs when only one of two similar items is available to a viewer's conscious awareness. The objective of this experiment was to investigate repetition blindness for faces and to observe whether encoding of similar emotions displayed on different individuals' faces produced repetition blindness. A further aim was to assess whether such an effect could be modulated by attentional task demands (sex judgment or expression judgment). Faces were presented so that four within-participant conditions could be compared: Complete repetition, same emotion/different Identity repetition, same identity/different Emotion repetition, and No repetition trials. The data revealed repetition blindness for Complete and same identity/different Emotion repetitions, but not for same emotion/different Identity repetitions. The lack of an "emotion blindness" effect supports previous reports that emotional expressions do not necessarily lead to automatic attentional biases.

Anxiety and spatial attention moderate the electrocortical response to aversive pictures

Aversive stimuli capture attention and elicit increased neural activity, as indexed by behavioral, electrocortical and hemodynamic measures; moreover, individual differences in anxiety relate to a further increased sensitivity to threatening stimuli. Evidence has been mixed, however, as to whether aversive pictures elicit increased neural response when presented in unattended spatial locations. In the current study, ERP and behavioral data were recorded from 49 participants as aversive and neutral pictures were simultaneously presented in spatially attended and unattended locations; on each trial, participants made same/different judgments about pictures presented in attended locations. Aversive images presented in unattended locations resulted in increased error rate and reaction time. The late positive potential (LPP) component of the ERP was only larger when aversive images were presented in attended locations, and this increase was positively correlated with self-reported state anxiety. Findings are discussed in regard to the sensitivity of ERP and behavioral responses to aversive distracters, and in terms of increased neural processing of threatening stimuli in anxiety.

Rapid acquisition of emotional information and attentional bias in anxious children

This study reports on the relationship between evaluative learning (EL) and attentional preference in children with varying degrees of anxiety, as measured by the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children, and varying degrees of parental anxiety, as measured by scores on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). In the first experiment, 3 age groups (7-8, 10-11 and adults with mean age 26.8 years) were compared on a novel EL method, in which neutral images "morphed" over 1s into either smiling or angry adult faces. There were no differences in EL between the age groups-each showing a strong EL effect. In 2 subsequent experiments, we examined learning and attention to stimuli following EL trials in 7- to 8-year olds. In Experiment 2, panic/separation anxiety (PSA) and the mothers' BAI predicted the overall magnitude of EL. In addition, high PSA children were more likely to attend to a neutral stimulus previously paired with a negative stimulus than were low PSA children. In Experiment 3, only PSA was positively associated with the magnitude of EL. In the attention trials, high PSA children had longer fixation times on frowning faces than did low PSA children but unlike Experiment 2 PSA was not associated with preferential attention towards stimuli with acquired negative valence. These results indicate that associations between learning, attention and emotional information can be influenced by separation anxiety and maternal anxiety.

The automaticity of emotional Stroop: a meta-analysis

An automatic bias to threat is often invoked to account for colour-naming interference in emotional Stroop. Recent findings by McKenna and Sharma [(2004). Reversing the emotional Stroop effect reveals that it is not what it seems: The role of fast and slow components. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 382-392], however, cast doubt on the fast and non-conscious nature of emotional Stroop. Interference by threat words only occurred with colour naming in the trial subsequent to the threat trial (i.e., a "slow" effect), but not immediately (i.e., a "fast" effect, as would be predicted by the bias hypothesis). In a meta-analysis of 70 published emotional Stroop studies the largest effects occurred when presentation of threat words was blocked, suggesting a strong contribution by slow interference. We did not find evidence; moreover, for interference in suboptimal (less conscious) presentation conditions and the only significant effects were observed in optimal (fully conscious) conditions with high-anxious non-clinical participants and patients. The emotional Stroop effect seems to rely more on a slow disengagement process than on a fast, automatic, bias.

Implicit cognitive processes in psychopathology: an introduction

Implicit or automatic processes are important in understanding the etiology and maintenance of psychopathological problems. In order to study implicit processes in psychopathology, measures are needed that are valid and reliable when applied to clinical problems. One of the main topics in this special issue concerns the development and validation of new or modified implicit tests in different domains of psychopathology. The other main topic concerns the prediction of clinical outcomes and new ways to directly influence implicit processes in psychopathology. We summarize the contributions to this special issue and discuss how they further our knowledge of implicit processes in psychopathology and how to measure them.

Snakes, spiders, guns, and syringes: how specific are evolutionary constraints on the detection of threatening stimuli?

In three experiments, the efficiency in detecting fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant visual stimuli are compared. A visual search paradigm is used where participants are presented with matrices of different sizes (4 objects/9 objects) and must determine whether all objects are taken from the same category or whether there is a discrepant one. Results from all experiments were consistent with the threat-superiority effect. Participants were quicker when the target was threatening than when it was not. Other indicators confirmed that the detection of threatening targets involves more efficient processes (reduced slopes, absence of position effects). A crucial aspect of these experiments was the comparison of evolutionary-relevant (snakes, spiders, etc.) and modern (guns, syringes, etc.) threats. The threat-superiority effect was repeatedly found for both types of target. Stronger effects were sometimes observed for modern than for evolutionary-relevant threats. The implications for evolutionary explanations of the effect of fear on visual attention are discussed.

Neural Processing of Fearful Faces: Effects of Anxiety are Gated by Perceptual Capacity Limitations

Debate continues as to the automaticity of the amygdala's response to threat. Accounts taking a strong automaticity line suggest that the amygdala's response to threat is both involuntary and independent of attentional resources. Building on these accounts, prominent models have suggested that anxiety modulates the output of an amygdala-based preattentive threat evaluation system. Here, we argue for a modification of these models. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected while volunteers performed a letter search task of high or low perceptual load superimposed on fearful or neutral face distractors. Neither high- nor low-anxious volunteers showed an increased amygdala response to threat distractors under high perceptual load, contrary to a strong automaticity account of amygdala function. Under low perceptual load, elevated state anxiety was associated with a heightened response to threat distractors in the amygdala and superior temporal sulcus, whereas individuals high in trait anxiety showed a reduced prefrontal response to these stimuli, consistent with weakened recruitment of control mechanisms used to prevent the further processing of salient distractors. These findings suggest that anxiety modulates processing subsequent to competition for perceptual processing resources, with state and trait anxiety having distinguishable influences upon the neural mechanisms underlying threat evaluation and "top-down" control.

Anxiety sensitivity: The role of conscious awareness and selective attentional bias to physical threat

Selective attentional biases were examined amongst individuals varying in levels of physical anxiety sensitivity. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine attention towards anxiety symptomatology, social threat and positive words. Stimuli were presented above (unmasked) and below (masked) the level of conscious awareness. High physical anxiety sensitivity was associated with attentional vigilance for anxiety symptomatology words in both unmasked and masked conditions. For positive words, however, those high in anxiety sensitivity were found to avoid such stimuli when they were masked, whereas they exhibited a relative vigilance when unmasked. If the differences between awareness conditions are reliable, then the impact of the automatic vigilance for threat might be modified by conscious attempts to direct attention towards other types of stimuli.

Event-related brain potentials and affective responses to threat in spider/snake-phobic and non-phobic subjects

We investigated cortical responses and valence/arousal ratings of spider phobic, snake phobic, and healthy subjects while they were processing feared, fear-relevant, emotional neutral, and pleasant stimuli. Results revealed significantly larger amplitudes of late ERP components (P3 and late positive complex, LPC) but not of early components (N1, P2, N2) in phobics when subjects were processing feared stimuli. This fear-associated increase of amplitudes of late ERP components in phobic subjects was maximal at centro-parietal and occipital brain sites. Furthermore, phobics but not controls rated feared stimuli to be more negative and arousing than fear-relevant, emotional neutral, and pleasant stimuli. Since late ERP components and valence/arousal ratings were only significantly increased when phobic subjects but not when healthy controls were processing feared stimuli, the present data suggest that P3 and LPC amplitudes represent useful neural correlates of the emotional significance and meaning of stimuli.

Cognitive Vulnerability to Emotional Disorders

A review of recent research on cognitive processing indicates that biases in attention, memory, and interpretation, as well as repetitive negative thoughts, are common across emotional disorders, although they vary in form according to type of disorder. Current cognitive models emphasize specific forms of biased processing, such as variations in the focus of attention or habitual interpretative styles that contribute to the risk of developing particular disorders. As well as predicting risk of emotional disorders, new studies have provided evidence of a causal relationship between processing bias and vulnerability. Beyond merely demonstrating the existence of biased processing, research is thus beginning to explore the cognitive causes of emotional vulnerability, and their modification.

Anxiety-related differences in affective categorizations of lexical stimuli

Effects of emotional valence on attention have been shown to occur even when stimuli are presented outside awareness. The impact of negative valence on stimulus processing has been demonstrated to be particularly salient in anxiety. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that compared to nonanxious individuals, anxious individuals have an enhanced ability to detect the valence of negative stimuli. However, it remains unclear whether anxious individuals are better at identifying the valence of threatening stimuli or, rather, more likely to label ambiguous stimuli as threatening. To investigate these hypotheses, high and low anxious participants categorized lexical stimuli as "safe" or "dangerous." Stimuli were presented at durations that allowed for both conscious (unmasked) and nonconscious (masked) processing. Results show that on masked trials, anxious individuals evidenced an enhanced ability to correctly classify threatening information, whereas nonanxious participants demonstrated an enhanced ability to correctly classify neutral or positive information. Signal detection analyses indicated results were explained by a response bias, whereby anxious individuals were more likely than nonanxious individuals to categorize masked words as threatening and nonanxious individuals were more likely to categorize masked words as nonthreatening. No group differences for nonword stimuli emerged, suggesting that anxiety-related response bias tendencies are activated only after detection of a weak semantic signal.

Putting Some Feeling Into It--The Conceptual and Empirical Relationships Between the Classic and Emotional Stroop Tasks: Comment on Algom, Chajut, and Lev (2004)

D. Algom, E. Chajut, and S. Lev presented a series of definitional, conceptual, and empirical arguments in support of their conclusion that the classic and emotional Stroop effects are, in their words, "unrelated phenomena" (p. 336), such that the term emotional Stroop effect is a misnomer in reference to the relatively greater interference in ink color naming of emotional versus neutral words. These are strong claims. In this comment, the author critically examines each component of Algom et al.'s case and argues that, in fact, none of these components represents compelling evidence in support of their eventual conclusions.

Attentional bias to threat and emotional response to biological challenge

Attentional bias towards threat reliably correlates with clinical anxiety status as well as elevated trait anxiety. Although such findings have led many to posit a potential causative or predictive role of threat-biased attentional processes on anxiety problems, little informative research exists. The present investigation was designed to address the role of threat-biased attentional processes on emotional/fearful responding. Eighty-seven participants provided baseline measures of anxiety vulnerability (i.e., anxiety sensitivity; unmasked/masked emotional Stroop task indices) and then underwent biological challenge procedures (inhalations of 20% carbon dioxide (CO2)-enriched air). Following challenge, participants completed measures of emotional response. Regression analyses indicated that both unmasked and masked attentional bias indices significantly predicted emotional responding above and beyond anxiety sensitivity. Exploratory analyses also revealed a gender effect, with prediction of emotional response largely attributable to females. These findings support attentional bias towards threat as a relatively independent factor predictive of emotional responding.

Independent Manipulation of Emotion in an Emotional Stroop Task Using Classical Conditioning

The effects of emotional connotation on emotional Stroop interference in anxiety were examined. First, a classical conditioning paradigm was used in which neutral words and nonwords were paired with either negative or neutral pictures. These conditioned stimuli were then presented in an emotional Stroop paradigm. Finally, participants rated each word and nonword for emotional connotation. The high-anxious group demonstrated significant interference for the nonwords that had been negatively conditioned, and these effects did not dissipate over time. The affective rating data supported the view that nonwords, but not the words had been successfully conditioned in the high-anxious group. This experiment provides evidence for the importance of emotional connotation rather than confounded semantic factors in the emotional Stroop effect.

Drug craving and addiction: integrating psychological and neuropsychopharmacological approaches

In the present review, an integrated approach to craving and addiction is discussed, which is based on recent insights from psychology and neuropsychopharmacology. An integrated model explains craving and relapse in humans by the psychological mechanism of "attentional bias" and provides neuropsychopharmacological mechanisms for this bias. According to this model, cognitive processes mediate between drug stimulus and the subject's response to this stimulus and subsequent behavioral response (e.g., drug use, relapse). According to the model, a conditioned drug stimulus produces an increase in dopamine levels in the corticostriatal circuit, in particular the anterior cingulate gyrus, amygdala, and nucleus accumbens, which in turn serves to draw the subject's attention towards a perceived drug stimulus. This process results in motor preparation and a hyperattentive state towards drug-related stimuli that, ultimately, promotes further craving and relapse. Evidence for this attentional bias hypothesis is reviewed from both the psychopharmacological and the neuroanatomical viewpoints. The attentional bias hypothesis raises several suggestions for clinical approaches and further research.

Contrasting two accounts of anxiety-linked attentional bias: selective attention to varying levels of stimulus threat intensity

Previous research has established that clinical anxiety patients and nonclinical populations with high levels of anxiety vulnerability characteristically orient attention toward moderately threatening stimuli. In contrast, populations with low levels of anxiety vulnerability typically orient attention away from such stimuli. The differing experimental predictions generated by 2 classes of hypothetical explanation for this anxiety-linked attentional discrepancy were tested, using attentional probe methodology to compare the attentional responses of high and low trait anxious individuals to facial stimuli of differing threat intensities. The results support the view that all individuals orient attention away from mildly threatening stimuli and toward strongly threatening stimuli, with differences in anxiety vulnerability reflecting the intensity of stimulus threat required to elicit the attentional vigilance response.

The influence of children's self-report trait anxiety and depression on visual search for emotional faces

BACKGROUND

This study presents two experiments that investigated the relationship between 7- and 10-year-olds' levels of self-report trait anxiety and depression and their visual search for threatening (angry faces) and non-threatening (happy and neutral faces) stimuli.

METHOD

In both experiments a visual search paradigm was used to measure participants' reaction times to detect the presence or absence of angry, happy or neutral schematic faces (Experiment 1) or cartoon drawings (Experiment 2). On target present trials, a target face was displayed alongside three, five or seven distractor items. On target absent trials all items were distractors.

RESULTS

Both experiments demonstrated that on target absent (but not present) trials, increased levels of anxiety produced significantly faster search times in the angry face condition, but not in the neutral condition. In Experiment 2 there was some trend towards significance between anxiety and searches for happy faces in absent trials. There were no effects of depression on search times in any condition.

CONCLUSION

The results support previous work highlighting a specific link between anxiety and attention to threat in childhood.

Multidimensional Anxiety and Content-specificity Effects in Preferential Processing of Threat

We examined the relative contribution of specific components of multidimensional anxiety to cognitive biases in the processing of threat-related information in three experiments. Attentional bias was assessed by the emotional Stroop word color-naming task, interpretative bias by an on-line inference processing task, and explicit memory bias by sensitivity (d') and response criterion (β) from word-recognition scores. Multiple regression analyses revealed, first, that phobic anxiety and evaluative anxiety predicted selective attention to physical- and ego-threat information, respectively; cognitive anxiety predicted selective attention to both types of threat. Second, phobic anxiety predicted inhibition of inferences related to physically threatening outcomes of ambiguous situations. And, third, evaluative anxiety predicted a response bias, rather than a genuine memory bias, in the reporting of presented and nonpresented ego-threat information. Other anxiety components, such as motor and physiological anxiety, or interpersonal and daily-routines anxiety made no specific contribution to any cognitive bias. Multidimensional anxiety measures are useful for detecting content-specificity effects in cognitive biases.

Eye movement assessment of emotional processing in anxiety

Eye fixations of participants high or low in trait anxiety were monitored during reading of context sentences predicting threatening or nonthreat events, followed by sentences in which a target word represented the predictable event or an inconsistent event. No effects were found on the target word but on the regions following it. When this word represented a threatening event suggested by the context, high anxiety facilitated reading of the posttarget region. When the target word was inconsistent with a threatening event, high anxiety was associated with interference in the final region. No such effects occurred with nonthreat sentences. This reveals selective prediction of threat in high anxiety. However, rather than being automatic, this bias involves elaboration that takes time to develop.

Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming?

The finding of stronger affective priming in less conscious (suboptimal) conditions than in fully conscious (optimal) conditions (S. T. Murphy & R. B. Zajonc, 1993) is theoretically important because it contradicts notions that emotions are primarily reflected by conscious states. In 2 experiments, this pattern of results was obtained. Happy and angry faces were presented both optimally and suboptimally and were masked by unknown ideographs. In Experiment 1, instructions for the conscious and less conscious affective priming conditions were matched, and affective ratings of ideographs were determined. In Experiment 2, a more implicit affective measure (facial electromyography of musculus zygomaticus major and musculus corrugator supercilii) served as the dependent variable. Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming was found in both experiments. It is concluded that stronger suboptimal than optimal processing is characteristic for affective processing and that it can also be found when instructions are matched and when a more implicit measure is assessed.