ArticlePloS one2022
Now you see it, now you don't: Relevance of threat enhances social anxiety-linked attentional bias to angry faces, but relevance of neutral information attenuates it.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Seeing Conflict: Identifying Self-Control Conflict Attenuates Early Allocation of Visual Attention to Positive Stimuli.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Article
- Exploring boundary conditions of goal-driven attentional capture by affective categories: the role of prioritisation in working memory.Psychological research · 2026Article
- No Evidence of Reliability Across 36 Variations of the Emotional Dot-Probe Task in 9,600 Participants.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
- Social processing modulates the initial allocation of attention towards angry faces: evidence from the N2pc component.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Temporary goals modulate attention to threat. We examined whether attentional bias to angry faces differs depending on whether a temporary background goal is neutral, or threat related, whilst also measuring social anxiety. Participants performed a dot probe task combined with a separate task that induced a temporary goal. Depending on the phase in this goal task, the goal made angry faces or neutral stimuli (i.e., houses) relevant. The dot probe task measured attention to combinations of angry faces, neutral but goal-relevant stimuli (i.e., houses), and neutral control stimuli. Attention was allocated to angry faces when an angry goal was active. This was more pronounced for people scoring high on social phobia. The neutral goal attenuated attention to angry faces and effects of social phobia were no longer apparent. These findings suggest that individual differences in social anxiety interact with current and temporary goals to affect attentional processes.
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