Attentional bias is assumed to be partly responsible for the onset and maintenance of anxiety by major cognitive theories of emotional disorders. Although much is already known about the therapeutic effects of attentional bias training, only a few studies have examined the mechanism responsible for these effects. In order to test if low-level, cognitive effects of attentional bias training depend on attentional control, 73 participants, who completed the STAI-x2 and the ACS questionnaires, were randomly assigned to a control or attentional (...) training group. The attentional manipulation was followed by a search task, during which novel neutral or negative faces could be presented within an array of all-neutral, all-negative or all-positive faces. It was found that individuals with higher ACS score displayed stronger attentional training effects, i.e., they were less accurate in detecting distinctive negative faces, and this effect was not found to be associated with STAI-x2 score. These results show that there is individual variability even in immediate, cognitive effects of attentional bias modification and that special abilities, such as attentional control, might be required for attentional training to be efficient. (shrink)

Presented studies investigated the specificity of visual and auditory modalities in attentional processing of emotion, and its association with temperamental dimensions and trait-like attentional control. During preliminary study 30 participants were presented with the paper-pencil visual search task and emotional prosody detection tasks. Results revealed visual happiness superiority and auditory sadness superiority. During the main study, in addition to attentional performance, 51 subjects were administrated two questionnaires: EPQ-R and Attentional Control Scale. Introducing individual differences into analysis limited the general pattern (...) of modality distinctiveness in attentional processing of emotional stimuli obtained in the preliminary study. Findings for all personality traits studied separately showed that Extraversion and low Neuroticism were associated with the visual sadness superiority. Whereas interactional analysis indicated effective visual threat processing in extraverts with good AC and effective friendly prosody detection when Neuroticism and AC remain in inverse relationship. Hence, we have found that processing emotional targets in both modalities is associated with temperament dimensions and their interactions with attentional control. Additionally, findings from both studies suggest that general psychological laws might be challenged by individual differences. (shrink)