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Updated: Jul 16, 2026
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Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
Published on: October 19, 2014
Selective attention to threatening faces in delusion-prone individuals
Deborah Arguedas1, Melissa J Green, Robyn Langdon
1Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Cognitive Neuropsychiatry
|March 14, 2007
Summary
Individuals prone to delusions show biased attention to threat, with faster initial engagement and slower disengagement from angry faces. This suggests both early and late attentional difficulties in processing threat-related information.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Psychopathology
Background:
- Selective attention to threat is linked to delusions in schizophrenia and nonclinical ideation.
- It remains unclear if threat bias involves early attention capture or later disengagement difficulties.
Observation:
- A modified dot-probe task was used with high and low delusion-prone groups.
- Participants detected probes after viewing angry-neutral or happy-neutral face pairs at varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs).
Findings:
- High-PDI individuals showed faster responses to probes near angry faces at short SOAs (200 ms), particularly in the left visual field.
- At longer SOAs (500 ms, 1250 ms), high-PDI individuals exhibited faster responses to probes near angry faces and slower responses to probes away from angry faces, irrespective of visual field.
Implications:
- Findings support emotion-selective engagement and defective disengagement for threat in delusion-prone individuals.
- These attentional biases may contribute to the maintenance of delusional ideation.
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