Everyday Attention

Question 1

What is attentional bias? (Eysenck and Keane, 2010)

Answer 1

The tendency for our perception to be affected by reoccurring thoughts

Question 2

An example of attentional bias in emotional disorders

Answer 2

Scanning the environment for threats means little attention for doing other things well, so divided attention is compromised and performance suffers

Question 3

Any benefits of attentional bias?

Answer 3

Evolutionary purpose? Pay greater attention to risky things in the environment that pose a threat
Tunnel vision- actively focus on one stimuli and ignore others

Question 4

How was anxiety tested by Attentional bias?

Answer 4

Pishyar et al. (2004) tested anxiety using the stroop task, they were asked to name the colour of the printed word which was either neutral or emotionally negative
There was a bias towards the emotional words as it took significantly longer to name the colors and more attention was given to look past the word and at the color

Question 5

What other emotional disorders might attentional bias impact and how? (McNally, 1990)

Answer 5

Eating disorders (food-related stimuli)
Drug disorders (substance-related stimuli)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (trauma-related words)

Question 6

How was the dot-probe task used for anxiety?

Answer 6

McLeod et al. (1986) displayed two words on the screen, one is neutral and another is emotionally negative, dot prove appears in previously occupied stimuli and participants are asked to press a button from when they detected it, response time was much faster to words replacing threatening stimuli (attention systematically drawn to theat)

Question 7

Who studied panic disorder?

Answer 7

De Court et al (2008)

Question 8

Who studied OCD?

Answer 8

Moritz et al. (2008)

Question 9

The visual search task in attentional bias (Rinck, 2005)

Answer 9

Rinck (2005) demonstrated this task in phobias, it was a spatial allocation task of a specific target in a jubble of words, participants were able to detect threat related word (spider) in a much faster response time than neutral words- elevated arousal and anxiety

Question 10

Evaluation of attentional bias (Eysenck + Keane, 2007)

Answer 10

Anxiety impairs inhibition and weakens mechanisms regulating automatic responses
High anxiety group showed attentional bias towards positive faces but no significant effect was found using words

Question 11

Driving and talking on a mobile research findings included (Bebe and Kuss, 2006)

Answer 11

Attention drops and skills worsen when attention is divided across two or more tasks
Talking on the mobile or hand set uses up attention demands, drivers failed to detect traffic signals, slower reactions and increases attentional lapses
Driving uses different resources which interfere with automatic ability, that requires capacity and over works the ability to perform both successfully