title: Eye-movement evidence of the time-course of attentional bias for threatening pictures in test-anxious students.
abstract: Protocols for measuring attentional bias to threat in test-anxiety, a special form of trait-anxiety, are rarely found in the literature. In our eye-tracking study, we introduced a new protocol, and studied the time-course of attention to test-related pictures with varying threat levels in 22 high test-anxious (HTA) and 22 low test-anxious (LTA) subjects. To determine whether attentional bias to test-related pictures is due to test-anxiety and not to state-anxiety, we also included a third group of 22 subjects with high state-anxiety but low test-anxiety (HSA). The subjects completed a free viewing task (FVT) in which high threat-neutral (HT-N) and low threat-neutral (LT-N) picture pairs were presented for 3 s. The results demonstrated that: (1) HTA subjects showed initial orienting to LT pictures, early attentional engagement with HT pictures later on and avoidance of HT pictures at the very end; (2) LTA subjects showed initial orienting to HT pictures and maintenance of attention on them later on; while (3) HSA subjects showed an initial orientation towards LT pictures and maintenance of attention on LT and HT pictures later on. These results suggest that, (high) test-anxiety is also prone to attentional bias towards test-related threat stimuli. Implications for future research are discussed.
authors.affiliation: a Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science , Southeast University, Ministry of Education , Nanjing , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yunying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: c Institute for Management Research , Radboud University , Nijmegen , The Netherlands.|f Department of Personnel Management, Work and Organizational Psychology , Ghent University , Ghent , Belgium.
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: De Beuckelaer
authors.affiliation: a Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science , Southeast University, Ministry of Education , Nanjing , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: a Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science , Southeast University, Ministry of Education , Nanjing , People's Republic of China.|b Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavior Sciences , Nanjing University , Nanjing , People's Republic of China.|d State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning , Beijing Normal University , Beijing , People's Republic of China.|e Beijing Key Lab of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of Psychology , Beijing Normal University , Beijing , People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Renlai
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000070379:Attentional Bias / Q000502:physiology*; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000502:physiology; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Test-anxiety; attentional bias; avoidance; time-course; vigilance