Published in

American Psychological Association, Emotion, 6(12), p. 1362-1366, 2012

DOI: 10.1037/a0028415

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Beyond Attentional Bias: A Perceptual Bias in a Dot-Probe Task

Journal article published in 2012 by Bruno R. Bocanegra ORCID, Jorg Huijding ORCID, René Zeelenberg
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Previous dot-probe studies indicate that threat-related face cues induce a bias in spatial attention. Independently of spatial attention, a recent psychophysical study suggests that a bilateral fearful face cue improves low spatial-frequency perception (LSF) and impairs high spatial-frequency perception (HSF). Here, we combine these separate lines of research within a single dot-probe paradigm. We found that a bilateral fearful face cue, compared with a bilateral neutral face cue, speeded up responses to LSF targets and slowed down responses to HSF targets. This finding is important, as it shows that emotional cues in dot-probe tasks not only bias where information is preferentially processed (i.e., an attentional bias in spatial location), but also bias what type of information is preferentially processed (i.e., a perceptual bias in spatial frequency). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).