title: Attentional biases in healthy adults: Exploring the impact of temperament and gender.
abstract: Attentional biases such as faster attentional orienting toward negative information were consistently replicated in high-anxious and depressive individuals, but findings in healthy individuals are inconsistent so far.
  
  
  
  Using a dot-probe paradigm, we investigated whether temperament traits and gender, which are linked to (sub)clinical symptoms and attentional processing, influenced attentional biases in healthy adults.
  
  
  
  All participants showed protective attentional biases in terms of orienting their attention away from negative information. In both genders higher values of negative affect were compensated with stronger attentional engagement with positive stimuli. This effect was more pronounced in men than in women. Effortful control fulfilled its regulative function in terms of stronger avoidance of negative stimuli only among men.
  
  
  
  Reaction times after probe detection provide only a snapshot of attention and allow only for an indirect assessment of visual attention. Future research should emphasize methods that allow for continuous monitoring of attention allocation, therefore results of the present study await replication in psychophysiological or eye-tracking studies.
  
  
  
  Our results highlight the importance of considering influencing factors such as gender and temperament traits for attentional biases in healthy adults.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health, Development and Psychological Intervention, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. Electronic address: nina.pintzinger@univie.ac.at.
authors.forename: Nina M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Pintzinger
authors.affiliation: Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Daniela M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Pfabigan
authors.affiliation: Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Ulrich S
authors.initials: US
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.affiliation: Department of Health, Development and Psychological Intervention, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Ilse
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kryspin-Exner
authors.affiliation: Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. Electronic address: claus.lamm@univie.ac.at.
authors.forename: Claus
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lamm
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000070379:Attentional Bias; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013694:Temperament; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attentional bias; Dot probe task; Effortful control; Gender; Negative affect; Temperament