Does culture moderate the encoding and recognition of negative cues? Evidence from an eye-tracking study.

Cross-cultural research has elucidated many important differences between people from Western European and East Asian cultural backgrounds regarding how each group encodes and consolidates the contents of complex visual stimuli. While Western European groups typically demonstrate a perceptual bias towards centralised information, East Asian groups favour a perceptual bias towards background information. However, this research has largely focused on the perception of neutral cues and thus questions remain regarding cultural group differences in both the perception and recognition of negative, emotionally significant cues. The present study therefore compared Western European (n = 42) and East Asian (n = 40) participants on a free-viewing task and a subsequent memory task utilising negative and neutral social cues. Attentional deployment to the centralised versus background components of negative and neutral social cues was indexed via eye-tracking, and memory was assessed with a cued-recognition task two days later. While both groups demonstrated an attentional bias towards the centralised components of the neutral cues, only the Western European group demonstrated this bias in the case of the negative cues. There were no significant differences observed between Western European and East Asian groups in terms of memory accuracy, although the Western European group was unexpectedly less sensitive to the centralised components of the negative cues. These findings suggest that culture modulates low-level attentional deployment to negative information, however not higher-level recognition after a temporal interval. This paper is, to our knowledge, the first to concurrently consider the effect of culture on both attentional outcomes and memory for both negative and neutral cues.

Attenuation of spatial bias with target template variation.

This study investigated the impact of target template variation or consistency on attentional bias in location probability learning. Participants conducted a visual search task to find a heterogeneous shape among a homogeneous set of distractors. The target and distractor shapes were either fixed throughout the experiment (target-consistent group) or unpredictably varied on each trial (target-variant group). The target was often presented in one possible search region, unbeknownst to the participants. When the target template was consistent throughout the biased visual search, spatial attention was persistently biased toward the frequent target location. However, when the target template was inconsistent and varied during the biased search, the spatial bias was attenuated so that attention was less prioritized to a frequent target location. The results suggest that the alternative use of target templates may interfere with the emergence of a persistent spatial bias. The regularity-based spatial bias depends on the number of attentional shifts to the frequent target location, but also on search-relevant contexts.

Characteristics of the time processing of adults' strongest sustained attentional bias toward neutral infant faces.

Previous studies have shown that adults exhibit the strongest attentional bias toward neutral infant faces when viewing faces with different expressions at different attentional processing stages due to different stimulus presentation times. However, it is not clear how the characteristics of the temporal processing associated with the strongest effect change over time. Thus, we combined a free-viewing task with eye-tracking technology to measure adults' attentional bias toward infant and adult faces with happy, neutral, and sad expressions of the same face. The results of the analysis of the total time course indicated that the strongest effect occurred during the strategic processing stage. However, the results of the analysis of the split time course revealed that sad infant faces first elicited adults' attentional bias at 0 to 500 ms, whereas the strongest effect of attentional bias toward neutral infant faces was observed at 1000 to 3000 ms, peaking at 1500 to 2000 ms. In addition, women and men had no differences in their responses to different expressions. In summary, this study provides further evidence that adults' attentional bias toward infant faces across stages of attention processing is modulated by expressions. Specifically, during automatic processing adults' attentional bias was directed toward sad infant faces, followed by a shift to the processing of neutral infant faces during strategic processing, which ultimately resulted in the strongest effect. These findings highlight that this strongest effect is dynamic and associated with a specific time window in the strategic process.

Attentional Bias Toward Cigarette-Related Cues in Male Smokers is Modulated by Cognitive Control Mechanisms.

Background: Many studies have found that smokers' attentional bias toward cigarette-related cues and cognitive control impairment significantly impacts their cigarette use. However, there is limited research on how the interaction between attentional bias and cognitive control may modulate smokers' cigarette-seeking behavior. Objectives: This study used a cigarette Stroop task to examine whether smokers with different attentional control ability had different levels of attentional bias toward cigarette-related cues. Methods: A total of 130 male smokers completed the Flanker task to measure their attentional control ability. The attentional control scores of all participants were ranked from low to high, with the top 27% placed in the high attentional control group and the bottom 27% in the low attentional control group. Subsequently, both groups completed the cigarette Stroop task to measure their attentional bias toward cigarette-related cues. Results: Smokers with low attentional control responded more slowly to cigarette-related cues than to neutral cues, while smokers with high attentional control showed no significant difference in their response time to either condition. Conclusions/Importance: Attentional control ability can regulate smokers' attentional bias toward cigarette-related cues. Smokers with low attentional control ability are more likely to have attentional bias toward cigarette-related cues, offering insights for targeted prevention of cigarette addiction.

Is impulsivity related to attentional bias in cigarette smokers? An exploration across levels of nicotine dependency and deprivation.

Research has largely focused on how attentional bias to smoking-related cues and impulsivity independently influence the development and maintenance of cigarette smoking, with limited exploration of the relationship between these mechanisms. The current experiments systematically assessed relationships between multiple dimensions of impulsivity and attentional bias, at different stages of attention, in smokers varying in nicotine dependency and deprivation. Nonsmokers (NS; n  = 26), light-satiated smokers (LS; n  = 25), heavy-satiated smokers (HS; n  = 23) and heavy 12-hour nicotine-deprived smokers (HD; n  = 30) completed the Barratt Impulsivity Scale, delayed discounting task, stop-signal task, information sampling task and a visual dot-probe assessing initial orientation (200 ms) and sustained attention (2000 ms) toward smoking-related cues. Sustained attention to smoking-related cues was present in both HS and LS, while initial orientation bias was only evident in HS. HS and LS also had greater levels of trait motor and nonplanning impulsivity and heightened impulsive choice on the delay discounting task compared with NS, while heightened trait attentional impulsivity was only found in HS. In contrast, in HD, nicotine withdrawal was associated with no attentional bias but heightened reflection impulsivity, poorer inhibitory control and significantly lower levels of impulsive choice relative to satiated smokers. Trait and behavioral impulsivity were not related to the extent of attentional bias to smoking-related cues at any stage of attention, level of nicotine dependency or state of deprivation. Findings have both clinical and theoretical implications, highlighting the unique and independent roles impulsivity and attentional bias may play at different stages of the nicotine addiction cycle.

Effects of Aerobic Exercise Combined With Attentional Bias Modification in the Care of Male Patients With a Methamphetamine Use Disorder.

OBJECTIVE: It remains unclear which individual or combined strategies are most beneficial for methamphetamine use disorders (MUDs). We compared the effects of aerobic exercise, attentional bias modification, and combined intervention on male patients with MUD. METHOD: One hundred male patients with MUD were randomly assigned to combined intervention, aerobic exercise, attentional bias modification, or control groups (25 patients per group). The 8-week intervention protocol included three 60-minute sessions of aerobic exercises per week. Primary outcomes included high- and low-frequency heart rate variability, executive function, and cardiorespiratory fitness measured by customized software, computerized tests, and the Harvard step test, respectively. Secondary outcomes included psychiatric symptoms, drug craving, training acceptability, and persistence. RESULTS: Participant characteristics were matched between groups at baseline. Executive function, heart rate variability, cardiorespiratory fitness, drug craving, and most psychiatric symptoms had significant time-group interactions at posttest (p < .05, η2 = .08-.28). Compared with the attentional bias modification and control groups, the combined intervention and aerobic exercise groups improved significantly in executive function, heart rate variability, cardiorespiratory fitness, and most secondary outcomes. In addition, high-frequency heart rate variability and cardiorespiratory fitness in the aerobic exercise group were significantly higher than those in the combined intervention group. CONCLUSIONS: Combination strategies showed comparable efficacy to aerobic exercise alone in improving executive function, psychiatric symptoms, and drug craving and significantly exceeded other conditions. For heart rate variability and cardiorespiratory fitness, aerobic exercise alone was the most effective. For acceptability and persistence, combination strategies were preferred over single-domain training and health education intervention.

Testing a brief attention training protocol to prevent emotional distress from a fear induction procedure.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Attentional hypervigilance to threat in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an important topic to investigate. Efforts to leverage attention training to prevent PTSD have been promising but underlying mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. The current study tested whether Attention Bias Modification (ABM) prior to an emotion induction of fear could reduce self-reported fear and arousal compared to two control conditions. METHODS: Participants (N = 86) were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to receive either (1) ABM where they were directed towards fear related words on every trial; (2) Attention Control Training (ACT) where they were directed towards fear related words on 50% of trials; or (3) Neutral training where all words were neutral. Participants then completed a fear emotion induction (a 2-min video), reporting fear, arousal, and mood before and after the emotion induction. RESULTS: Participants in the ABM condition had lower fear compared to the Neutral condition b = 11.43, 95% CI (1.20, 21.65), d = 0.48. Participants in the ABM condition did not have lower fear compared to the ACT condition b = 9.75, 95% CI (-0.64, 19.96), d = 0.41. Importantly, attentional avoidance at baseline moderated the effect of condition for both fear and arousal; higher avoidance at baseline for the ABM condition was associated with lower fear and arousal after the emotion induction compared to the Neutral condition. LIMITATIONS: The sample size was relatively small and limited in diversity. CONCLUSIONS: These findings are the first experimental evidence showing that the benefit of ABM prior to a fearful experience may be in its reduction of the target emotion. Additionally, ABM may work best for those that demonstrate the most avoidance at baseline in their attention towards fearful stimuli.

Negative emotional cues improve free recall of positive and neutral words in unmedicated patients with major depressive disorder.

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) exhibit attentional biases toward negative, mood-congruent stimuli while filtering out positive and neutral stimuli, resulting in memory biases to negative content. While attentional and memory biases in MDD have been extensively studied, the underlying mechanisms of these biases remain unclear. The current study investigates a novel model proposing that exposure to negative emotional cues triggers a transient "attentional window" in individuals with MDD, leading to heightened and deeper cognitive processing of any subsequent information, irrespective of its content. Forty-two unmedicated patients with MDD and no comorbid disorder and 41 healthy controls, completed six blocks of the emotional memory task, in which they were asked to watch a short video (negative, neutral, or positive valence) followed by a memory test on a list of neutral or positive valance words. Results indicated that participants with MDD, but not healthy controls, had better recall performance after a negative video compared to after neutral or positive videos, and that this effect occurred for both neutral and positive word-lists. These findings provide evidence that participants with MDD engage in deeper information processing following exposure to negative emotional stimuli. Potential clinical implications are discussed.

Eye-tracking does not reveal early attention processing of sexual copulatory movement in heterosexual men and women.

Men and women respond differently when presented with sexual stimuli. Men's reaction is gender-specific, and women's reaction is gender-nonspecific. This might be a result of differential cognitive processing of sexual cues, namely copulatory movement (CM), which is present in almost every dynamic erotic stimulus. A novelty eye-tracking procedure was developed to assess the saliency of short film clips containing CM or non-CM sexual activities. Results from 29 gynephilic men and 31 androphilic women showed only small and insignificant effects in attention bias and no effects in attentional capture. Our results suggest that CM is not processed differently in men and women and, therefore, is not the reason behind gender-nonspecific sexual responses in women.

Attentional bias to infant faces might be associated with previous care experiences and involvement in childcare in same-sex mothers / El sesgo de atención hacia los rostros de los bebés podría estar asociado con experiencias de cuidado previas y la participación en el cuidado infantil en madres del mismo sexo

Background: Attentional bias toward infant faces is associated with parental sensitivity and supports the infant-caregiver attachment relationship, ultimately fostering child health outcomes. However, experience-related determinants of parents' attentional bias to infant faces have been poorly investigated. We examined attentional bias to infant versus adult faces in a sample of same-sex mothers (N = 76), and whether it varied depending on maternal involvement in childcare and the perceived quality of past experiences of care. Method: A Go/no-Go attentional task was used to compare the effects of infant and adult faces in retaining attention. Maternal involvement in childcare was measured using items addressing nurturing behaviors. Memories of past experiences of care were collected using the short-form version of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection scale. Results: Results confirmed that infant faces induced greater attentional bias compared to adult faces. More involved mothers were more biased, in terms of attention, to infant versus adult faces. Attentional bias to infant versus adult faces increased as mothers felt more rejected by their own fathers during childhood. Discussion: Our findings suggested that attentional bias to infant faces might be associated with past experiences of care and direct commitment in childcare in same-sex mothers. Robust and accurate empirical findings on same-sex parent families are essential to inform social policies supporting these families’ well being.(AU)

Maternal attachment security modulates the relationship between vulnerability to anxiety and attentional bias to threat in healthy children.

This study aimed to investigate whether attentional bias to threat, commonly observed in clinically anxious children, also manifests in healthy children, potentially aiding the early detection of at-risk individuals. Additionally, it sought to explore the moderating role of parent-child attachment security on the association between vulnerability factors (anxiety sensitivity, intolerance of uncertainty, perseverative cognitions) as indicators of vulnerability to anxiety, and attentional bias towards threat in healthy children. A total of 95 children aged 8 to 12 years completed the Visual Search Task to assess attentional bias. Vulnerability to anxiety was measured using a composite score derived from the Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index, Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale for Children, and Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire. Parent-child attachment security was assessed using the Security Scale-Child Self-Report. Analyses revealed that higher vulnerability to anxiety was associated with faster detection of anger-related stimuli compared to neutral ones, and this association was further influenced by high maternal security. These findings in healthy children suggest an interaction between specific factors related to anxiety vulnerability and the security of the mother-child relationship, leading to cognitive patterns resembling those seen in clinically anxious individuals. These results hold promise for early identification of children at risk of developing anxiety disorders.

Gaze data of 4243 participants shows link between leftward and superior attention biases and age.

Healthy individuals typically show more attention to the left than to the right (known as pseudoneglect), and to the upper than to the lower visual field (known as altitudinal pseudoneglect). These biases are thought to reflect asymmetries in neural processes. Attention biases have been used to investigate how these neural asymmetries change with age. However, inconsistent results have been reported regarding the presence and direction of age-related effects on horizontal and vertical attention biases. The observed inconsistencies may be due to insensitive measures and small sample sizes, that usually only feature extreme age groups. We investigated whether spatial attention biases, as indexed by gaze position during free viewing of a single image, are influenced by age. We analysed free-viewing data from 4,243 participants aged 5-65 years and found that attention biases shifted to the right and superior directions with increasing age. These findings are consistent with the idea of developing cerebral asymmetries with age and support the hypothesis of the origin of the leftward bias. Age modulations were found only for the first seven fixations, corresponding to the time window in which an absolute leftward bias in free viewing was previously observed. We interpret this as evidence that the horizontal and vertical attention biases are primarily present when orienting attention to a novel stimulus - and that age modulations of attention orienting are not global modulations of spatial attention. Taken together, our results suggest that attention orienting may be modulated by age and that cortical asymmetries may change with age.

Exploring Attentional Bias toward Alcohol Content: Insights from Eye-Movement Activity.

INTRODUCTION: Attentional bias (AB) is an implicit selective attention toward processing disorder-significant information while neglecting other environmental cues. Considerable empirical evidence highlights the clinical implication of AB in the onset and maintenance of substance use disorder. An innovative method to explore direct measures of AB relies on the eye-movement activity using technologies like eye-tracking (ET). Despite the growing interest regarding the clinical relevance of AB in the spectrum of alcohol consumption, more research is needed to fully determine the AB patterns and its transfer from experimental to clinical applications. The current study consisted of three consecutive experiments. The first experiment aimed to design an ad-hoc visual attention task (VAT) consisting of alcohol-related and neutral images using a nonclinical sample (n = 15). The objective of the second and third experiments was to analyze whether the effect of type of image (alcohol-related vs. neutral images) on AB toward alcohol content using the VAT developed in the first experiment was different for type of drinker (light vs. heavy drinker in the second experiment [n = 30], and occasional social drinkers versus alcohol use disorder (AUD) patients in the third experiment [n = 48]). METHODS: Areas of interest (AOIs) within each type of image (neutral and alcohol-related) were designed and raw ET-based data were subsequently extracted through specific software analyses. For experiment 1, attention maps were created and processed for each image. For experiments 2 and 3, data on ET variables were gathered and subsequently analyzed through a two-way ANOVA with the aim of examining the effects of the type of image and drinker on eye-movement activity. RESULTS: There was a statistically significant interaction effect between type of image and type of drinker (light vs. heavy drinker in experiment 2, F(1, 56) = 13.578, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.195, and occasional social drinker versus AUD patients in the experiment 3, F(1, 92) = 35.806, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.280) for "first fixation" with large effect sizes, but not for "number of fixations" and "dwell time." The simple main effect of type of image on mean "first fixation" score for AUD patients was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: The data derived from the experiments indicated the importance of AB in sub-clinical populations: heavy drinkers displayed an implicit preference for alcohol-related images compared to light drinkers. Nevertheless, AB fluctuations in patients with AUD compared to the control group were found. AUD patients displayed an early interest in alcohol images, followed by an avoidance attentional processing of alcohol-related images. The results are discussed in light of recent literature in the field.

The acute effects of cannabis, with and without cannabidiol, on attentional bias to cannabis related cues: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study.

RATIONALE: Attentional bias to drug-related stimuli is hypothesised to contribute towards addiction. However, the acute effects of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on attentional bias to cannabis cues, the differential response in adults and adolescents, and the moderating effect of cannabidiol (CBD) are unknown. OBJECTIVES: Our study investigated (1) the acute effects of vaporised cannabis on attentional bias to cannabis-related images in adults and adolescents and (2) the moderating influences of age and CBD. METHODS: We conducted a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study where three weight-adjusted vaporised cannabis preparations: 'THC' (8 mg THC for a 75-kg person), 'THC + CBD' (8 mg THC and 24 mg CBD for a 75-kg person) and PLA (matched placebo). Cannabis was administered on 3 separate days to 48 participants, who used cannabis 0.5-3 days/week: 24 adolescents (12 females, aged 16-17) and 24 adults (12 females, aged 26-29). Participants completed a visual probe task with cannabis cues. Our primary outcome was attentional bias to cannabis stimuli, measured using the differential reaction time to a cannabis vs. neutral probe, on 200-ms trials. RESULTS: In contrast to hypotheses, attention was directed away from cannabis cues on placebo, and there was a main effect of the drug (F(2,92) = 3.865, p = 0.024, η2p = 0.077), indicating THC administration eliminated this bias. There was no significant impact of CBD nor an age-by-drug interaction. CONCLUSIONS: Acute THC intoxication eliminated attentional bias away from cannabis cues. There was no evidence of differential response in adolescents compared to adults and no evidence that a moderate vaporised dose of CBD altered the impact of cannabis on attentional bias. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was listed with the US National Library of Medicine and registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, URL: Do Adolescents and Adults Differ in Their Acute Response to Cannabis?-Full Text View-ClinicalTrials.gov, registration number: NCT04851392.

Expectancy and attention bias to spiders: Dissecting anticipation and allocation processes using ERPs.

The current registered report focused on the temporal dynamics of the relationship between expectancy and attention toward threat, to better understand the mechanisms underlying the prioritization of threat detection over expectancy. In the current event-related potentials experiment, a-priori expectancy was manipulated, and attention bias was measured, using a well-validated paradigm. A visual search array was presented, with one of two targets: spiders (threatening) or birds (neutral). A verbal cue stating the likelihood of encountering a target preceded the array, creating congruent and incongruent trials. Following cue presentation, preparatory processes were examined using the contingent negative variation (CNV) component. Following target presentation, two components were measured: early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP), reflecting early and late stages of natural selective attention toward emotional stimuli, respectively. Behaviorally, spiders were found faster than birds, and congruency effects emerged for both targets. For the CNV, a non-significant trend of more negative amplitudes following spider cues emerged. As expected, EPN and LPP amplitudes were larger for spider targets compared to bird targets. Data-driven, exploratory, topographical analyses revealed different patterns of activation for bird cues compared to spider cues. Furthermore, 400-500 ms post-target, a congruency effect was revealed only for bird targets. Together, these results demonstrate that while expectancy for spider appearance is evident in differential neural preparation, the actual appearance of spider target overrides this expectancy effect and only in later stages of processing does the cueing effect come again into play.

Attentional engagement with and disengagement from appearance ideals: Differential associations with body dissatisfaction frequency and duration?

Recent work has served to dissociate two dimensions of trait body dissatisfaction: body dissatisfaction frequency and body dissatisfaction duration. The present study sought to evaluate whether body dissatisfaction frequency and body dissatisfaction duration are each associated with distinct patterns of appearance-related cognitive processing. It was hypothesized that speeded attentional engagement with idealized bodies is associated with higher frequency of body dissatisfaction episodes, while slowed attentional disengagement from such information may instead be associated with higher duration of body dissatisfaction episodes. Participants (238 women, 149 men) completed an attentional task capable of independently assessing attentional engagement with, and attentional disengagement from, idealized bodies. Participants also completed both trait and in vivo (i.e., ecological momentary assessment) measures of body dissatisfaction frequency and duration. Results showed that neither engagement nor disengagement bias index scores predicted variance in either body dissatisfaction frequency measures or body dissatisfaction duration measures. Findings suggest that either biased attentional engagement with, and disengagement from, idealized bodies do not associate with the frequency and duration of body dissatisfaction episodes, or there are other key moderating factors involved in the expression of body dissatisfaction-linked attentional bias.

Sleep-related attentional bias in insomnia: The mediating role of arousal.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Characterize the nature of attentional biases toward nocturnal and diurnal sleep-related stimuli in individuals with insomnia disorder. We investigated the contributing role of sleep-related attentional biases in insomnia severity and whether their effects on insomnia severity were mediated by arousal and valence levels of the presented stimuli. METHODS: Sixty-four individuals with insomnia disorder and 70 controls completed two Posner spatial cueing tasks including both nocturnal (alarm clocks) and diurnal (fatigue) pictorial stimuli associated with neutral cues. Arousal and valence of the sleep-related stimuli were assessed using a 5-point Likert type scale. RESULTS: Attention biases characterized by difficulty disengaging from and increased avoidance for daytime fatigue, and by difficulty disengaging from alarm clocks were observed in individuals with insomnia disorder compared to controls. On the whole sample, difficulty to disengage from diurnal and nocturnal sleep-related stimuli were related mostly to higher arousal rating of sleep-related stimuli and insomnia severity. Higher arousal rating for sleep-related stimuli mediates the relationship between difficulty disengaging and insomnia severity. LIMITATIONS: The cross-sectional nature of the study. CONCLUSIONS: We provide first initial evidence for an attentional bias characterized by on one side, avoidance for diurnal sleep-related stimuli and on other side, disengagement for both diurnal and nocturnal sleep-related stimuli in patients with insomnia. Disengagement difficulties for both diurnal and nocturnal sleep-related stimuli indirectly affected insomnia severity through arousal elicited by these stimuli. It appears important to develop and apply attentional bias modification training therapeutic interventions that can effectively reduce sleep-related arousal and attentional biases.

Modifying biased attention towards food stimuli in binge eating disorder: A multi-session training study.

Individuals with binge eating disorder (BED) exhibit a biased attention towards food stimuli. Against this backdrop, the present study with pre-registered design (ID: DRKS00012984) tested whether (a) a training designed to reduce attentional food processing indeed modifies this bias, (b) this reduction is evident in several measures of food-related attention and (c) this is associated with reductions in craving, binge frequency over the past 28 days and calories eaten in a laboratory based bogus taste test. Individuals with BED were randomly allocated to four sessions of either an attentional bias modification training (ABMT; n = 39) or a comparable no-modification control training (CT; n = 27). In all measures assessed via eye-tracking - dwell time bias, dwell time bias variability and first fixation bias - food-related bias decreased in the ABMT relative to the CT. Against our hypothesis, no differential between-group effects were found for reaction time (RT) bias and its variability as well as for calories consumed in a bogus taste test. By contrast, reductions in binge frequency and subjective craving were found for both groups. Taken together, the tendency to preferentially process food seems a modifiable phenomenon in individuals with BED. However, modifying this selective viewing pattern does not seem a prerequisite for a successful reduction of binge frequency.

Contamination fear and attention bias variability early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in the salience and importance of information relating to both the risk of infection, and factors that could mitigate against such risk. This is likely to have contributed to elevated contamination fear concerns in the general population. Biased attention for contamination-related information has been proposed as a potential mechanism underlying contamination fear, though evidence regarding the presence of such biased attention has been inconsistent. A possible reason for this is that contamination fear may be characterised by variability in attention bias that has not yet been examined. The current study examined the potential association between attention bias variability for both contamination-related and mitigation-related stimuli, and contamination fear during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. A final sample of 315 participants completed measures of attention bias and contamination fear. The measure of average attention bias for contamination-related stimuli and mitigation-related stimuli was not associated with contamination fear (r = 0.055 and r = 0.051, p > 0.10), though both attention bias variability measures did show a small but statistically significant relationship with contamination fear (r = 0.133, p < 0.05; r = 0.147, p < 0.01). These attention bias variability measures also accounted for significant additional variance in contamination fear above the average attention bias measure (and controlling for response time variability). These findings provide initial evidence for the association between attention bias variability and contamination fear, underscoring a potential target for cognitive bias interventions for clinical contamination fear.

A limited visual search advantage for illusory faces.

The human visual system is very sensitive to the presence of faces in the environment, so much so that it can produce the perception of illusory faces in everyday objects. Growing research suggests that illusory faces and real faces are processed by similar perceptual and neural mechanisms, but whether this similarity extends to visual attention is less clear. A visual search study showed that illusory faces have a search advantage over objects when the types of objects vary to match the objects in the illusory faces (e.g., chair, pepper, clock) (Keys et al., 2021). Here, we examine whether the search advantage for illusory faces over objects remains when compared against objects that belong to a single category (flowers). In three experiments, we compared visual search of illusory faces, real faces, variable objects, and uniform objects (flowers). Search for real faces was best compared with all other types of targets. In contrast, search for illusory faces was only better than search for variable objects, not uniform objects. This result shows a limited visual search advantage for illusory faces and suggests that illusory faces may not be processed like real faces in visual attention.