COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2000, 14 (3), 375 399

Selective attention to threat: A test of two cognitive models of anxiety

Karin Mogg, James McNamara, Mark Powys, Hannah Rawlinson, Anna Seiffer, and Brendan P. Bradley
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK

Two experiments evaluated differential predictions from two cognitive formulations of anxiety. According to one view, attentional biases for threat re ect vulnerability to anxiety; and as threat inputs increase, high trait anxious individuals should become more vigilant, and low trait individuals more avoidant, of threat (Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1988, 1997). However, according to a ``cognitive-motivational view, trait anxiety in uences the appraisal of stimulus threat value, rather than the direction of attentional bias, and both high and low trait anxious individuals should exhibit greater vigilance for high rather than mild threat stimuli (Mogg & Bradley, 1998). To test these predictions, two experiments examined the effect of manipulating stimulus threat value on the direction of attentional bias. The stimuli included high threat and mild threat pictorial scenes presented in a probe detection task. Results from both studies indicated a signi cant main effect of stimulus threat value on attentional bias, as there was increased vigilance or reduced avoidance of threat, as threat value increased. This effect was found even within low trait anxious individuals, consistent with the ``cognitive-motivational view. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

There has been considerable interest in the effect of emotional information on the capture of selective attention. For example, Pratto and John (1991) proposed that people automatically evaluate the ``goodness or ``badness of stimuli so that attention is directed to negatively evaluated stimuli in the environment. Kitayama and Howard (1994) suggested that emotional stimuli can amplify attentive processing and that, under certain stimulus
Requests for reprints should be sent to either Karin Mogg or Brendan Bradley at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK. Karin Mogg holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in Basic Biomedical Science. This research was supported in part by the Wellcome Trust (Ref: 51076).

q 2000 Psychology Press Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/02699931.html

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conditions, negative stimuli tend to preferentially capture attention, although ndings of the relative effects of positive and negative information on attracting attention have often been mixed (e.g., Fazio, RoskosEwoldsen, & Powell, 1994; Hansen & Hansen, 1988). From a clinical perspective, cognitive theories of anxiety have emphasised the role of biases in attentional processes in the aetiology and maintenance of anxiety states (e.g., Eysenck, 1992; Mathews, 1990; Williams et al., 1988, 1997). In accord with Oatley and Johnson-Lairds (1987) emphasis on the adaptive value of emotion in its evolutionary context, Mathews (1990) suggested that anxiety is associated with a speci c mode of operation within the cognitive system that serves to determine processing priorities. Speci cally, anxiety is characterised by a hypervigilant mode in which the person scans the environment for threatrelated stimuli, with priority of processing being allocated to the initial encoding of threat. He further suggested that individuals differ in their readiness to adopt a vigilant processing mode for threat, with those vulnerable to anxiety having a greater tendency to direct processing resources towards danger-relevant stimuli. Eysencks (1992) hypervigilance theory similarly advocated that an attentional bias for threat underlies vulnerability to clinical anxiety, and that this bias should be particularly evident in anxiety-prone individuals under conditions of stress. Selective hypervigilance for threat may also maintain anxiety states, because anxiety-prone individuals would be more likely to detect potentially threatening cues in their environment, which would enhance their view of the world as being an unduly dangerous place. Williams et al. (1988, 1997) also proposed that automatic vigilance for threat re ects a cognitive vulnerability factor for clinical anxiety. That is, individuals who have a bias to direct their attention towards threat are more susceptible to the development of anxiety disorders when under stress. According to the 1988 model, two mechanisms are responsible for attentional biases to threat in anxiety (see top panel of Figure 1). An Affective Decision Mechanism (ADM) assesses the threat value of environmental stimuli, and its output feeds into a Resource Allocation Mechanism (RAM) which determines the allocation of processing resources. The operation of the RAM is in uenced by trait anxiety; i.e., high trait anxious individuals have an enduring tendency to orient attention to threat, whereas low trait individuals have an opposite tendency, to be avoidant of threat. This difference in attentional bias between high and low trait anxious individuals becomes more apparent as output from the ADM increases. Thus, as state anxiety (or stimulus threat input) increases, high trait anxious individuals should become more vigilant, whereas low trait anxious become more avoidant of threat. So, following this model, attentional biases are an interactive function of trait anxiety and threat input.

Figure 1.

Cognitive mechanisms underlying initial orienting to threat in anxiety.

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Williams et al. (1997) updated their 1988 model while drawing on the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) model of Cohen, Dunbar, and McClelland (1990). Within this connectionist framework, the operation of the ADM was conceptualised instead as activation of input units that are associatively ``tagged with a threat value. The RAM was viewed as a Task Demand Unit in PDP terms. Despite the reformulation using PDP terminology, several core assumptions remained unchanged between the 1988 and 1997 models. That is, high trait anxious individuals tend to react to increased activation of threat input units by switching resources towards the source of threat, whereas low trait anxious individuals have a bias to direct processing resources away from an item that has been evaluated as threatening. Thus, the direction of the attentional bias for threat provides an index of vulnerability to generalised anxiety. Recent cognitive models of anxiety, such as those of Williams et al. (1988, 1997), are important for several reasons. One notable feature of their theories is that they seek to explain differences in cognitive bias between clinical anxiety and depression, as the latter appears primarily to in uence later elaborative stages of processing, rather than early attentional processes. Moreover, they provide not only a detailed analysis of the mechanisms that might underlie vulnerability to and maintenance of clinical anxiety, but also a theoretical foundation for the development of anti-anxiety treatments. However, such models have been developed largely on the basis of results from studies using single words as stimuli. A limitation of this work is that the stimuli have a restricted range of threat value (e.g., individually presented words such as ``illness and ``stupid have relatively mild threat value). In addition, their threat value is prone to a confound with subjective familiarity effects (i.e., threat words are likely to have a higher subjective frequency of usage in high rather than low anxious individuals). Consequently, the ndings from such research may provide incomplete information for a general model of information processing of threat. Furthermore, cognitive accounts of anxiety, such as those of Williams et al. (1988, 1997), appear to have problems in explaining attentional biases for severe threat stimuli, because they lead to counterintuitive predictions for low trait anxious individuals. According to their view, as activation of threat input units increases, low trait anxious individuals become more avoidant of threat. The activation level of these input units depends on a range of variables, including state anxiety and stimulus threat value. However, it is clearly important from an evolutionary perspective that an effective threat detection system would have to ensure that attention is directed to real or severe threats (e.g., an attacking animal). Thus, low trait anxious individuals should show greater vigilance for severe threat than

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mild threat stimuli, otherwise the system would be dysfunctional. This issue has been somewhat overlooked in recent theoretical accounts, and Williams et al.s model requires revision to take account of attentional biases across a wider range of threat stimuli. We have recently proposed an alternative view of the mechanisms that may underlie attentional biases in anxiety (Mogg & Bradley, 1998). This view has been in uenced by several in uential psychobiological and personality theories which share a common assumption, namely, that two key factors largely determine normal and abnormal emotions. These factors have been variously labelled, such as the personality traits of Neuroticism and Extraversion (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1969) and Anxiety and Impulsivity (Gray, 1982); and the emotional states of Valence and Arousal (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1990) and Negative and Positive Affect (Watson & Tellegen, 1985). Despite some critical differences between these theoretical views, these factors can be mapped on to a common two-dimensional framework comprising two orthogonal variables of emotional valence and goal engagement (Lang et al., 1990; Tellegen, 1985). Our ``cognitive-motivational view similarly assumes that two key variables underlie emotion- and motivation-related behaviours (i.e., valence and goal engagement). First, a Valence Evaluation System is responsible for assessing stimulus threat value (see lower part of Figure 1). Its functions correspond largely to the stimulus appraisal processes described in LeDouxs (1995, 1996) neural model of anxiety, and include not only automatic, rapid analysis of crude stimulus features (e.g., dark, looming objects) but also the integration of more detailed information (e.g., concerning stimulus context and information stored in memory). Thus, several variables may in uence the output of the Valence Evaluation System not only the nature of the stimulus, but also its context, interoceptive information about current arousal level, and previous learning experiences. In addition, trait anxiety re ects the reactivity of the Valence Evaluation System to aversive stimuli. That is, the system is more sensitive in anxiety-prone individuals, and so trivial negative stimuli are tagged as having a disproportionately high threat value. Output from the Valence Evaluation System feeds into a Goal Engagement System, which in turn determines the allocation of processing resources. So if a stimulus is tagged as having a high threat value, this mechanism automatically interrupts ongoing activities and allocates processing resources towards the threat (cf. Gray, 1982). Such a mechanism would have obvious evolutionary value in allowing rapid detection of and response to threat. However, if the stimulus is tagged as having little or no threat value, then the organism will disregard it, inhibit any further processing of it, and maintain processing resources on current goals.

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According to the ``cognitive-motivational view, individual differences in the sensitivity of valence evaluation processes to threat stimuli may be a key factor underlying trait anxiety. So, a mild threat stimulus (e.g., the word ``attack ) might be appraised as having moderately high threat value by an anxiety-prone individual, which in turn would result in increased attentional resources being directed towards that stimulus, via the goal engagement system. On the other hand, a low trait anxious individual would evaluate that stimulus as having trivial threat value, and would thus disregard it in favour of more positively hedonic, or current goalrelevant, stimuli (i.e., attentional avoidance of a stimulus evaluated as mild threat). However, as threat value increases further, even low trait anxious individuals should show an increased tendency to allocate attention towards, rather than away from, stimuli with higher threat value. Thus, for threat stimuli in the mild to high range, one would expect that increasing threat value would be associated with increasing vigilance in both low and high trait anxious individuals.1 To summarise so far, there are some common features between our model and that of Williams et al., but also some distinctive differences. For example, the Valence Evaluation and Goal Engagement Systems (our terminology re ects the in uence of the work of Lang et al., 1990, and Tellegen, 1985, as noted earlier) largely correspond in function with the Affective Decision and Resource Allocation Mechanisms, respectively, in Williams et al.s (1988) model, although they reduced the distinction between these two separate mechanisms (ADM and RAM) in their 1997 revision. More importantly, a critical difference between these theoretical approaches is that Williams et al. (1988, 1997) assume that individual differences in vulnerability to anxiety depend primarily on the mechanism responsible for allocating attentional resources to threat stimuli; whereas, according to Mogg and Bradley (1998), individual differences in anxiety proneness depend largely on the processes responsible for the evaluation of threat. Furthermore, these formulations lead to fundamentally different predictions regarding attentional biases for mild versus high threat stimuli. Following Williams et al. (1988, 1997), high trait anxious individuals should become more vigilant, and low trait anxious individuals more avoidant of threat, as stimulus threat value increases; whereas according to Mogg and Bradley (1998), all individuals, including those with low trait anxiety, should be more vigilant for high than mild threat stimuli. The main aim of the present experiments was to evaluate these different predictions.
1 In the case of severe threat stimuli, any trait anxiety-related differences in attentional bias may become less apparent due to a ceiling effect; as most individuals would seem likely to be highly vigilant for very dangerous stimuli.

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One method that has been widely used to assess attentional biases for threat is the probe detection task 2 (e.g., MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986; Mogg, Bradley, & Williams, 1995). This was adapted from paradigms in experimental cognitive psychology which indicated that spatial attention can be assessed from the speed of manual responses to visual probes (e.g., Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980; Navon & Margalit, 1983). That is, individuals are faster to respond to a probe stimulus that is presented in an attended, rather than unattended, region of a visual display. For example, in this task, two stimuli are presented simultaneously on a screen (e.g., a threat word and a neutral word), and immediately after they disappear, a dot probe is presented in the position of one of the stimuli. Participants are required to respond as quickly as possible to the probe. Research using word stimuli has shown that individuals with generalised anxiety disorder are relatively faster to detect probes in the location of threat words compared with controls, which is consistent with anxiety-related vigilance for threat (e.g., MacLeod et al., 1986; Mogg et al., 1995). Moreover, there is evidence that normal individuals with high levels of trait anxiety show increased vigilance for threat words when tested under high stress compared with no stress conditions (e.g., MacLeod & Mathews, 1988; Mogg, Bradley, & Hallowell, 1994). These ndings for clinical anxiety and for high trait anxiety are consistent with both Williams et al.s model and our cognitive-motivational view. With regard to low trait anxiety, there were trends in the latter two studies for low trait anxious individuals to show increased avoidance of threat words when under high stress compared to no stress. However, these trends were not signi cant and so do not provide unequivocal support for Williams et al.s model. Furthermore, the nding of avoidance of mild threat stimuli in nonanxious individuals is compatible with both theoretical views, as discussed earlier. The differential predictions from these two views are more likely to be clari ed by research that uses stimuli with a wider range of threat value than that of single words, such as pictorial scenes.

2 The emotional Stroop task has also been used to evaluate attentional biases (e.g., MacLeod & Rutherford, 1992), but this has led to a rather mixed pattern of results (e.g., reviews by Mathews & MacLeod, 1994; Williams et al., 1997), with some studies suggesting that increasing threat inputs (e.g., presence of a feared object) may suppress rather than enhance emotional Stroop interference effects (e.g., Mathews & Sebastian, 1993). The interpretation of such interference effects is not clear-cut because they may arise not only in selective attention, but also in other aspects of processing, such as response selection. Such interference effects may also be obscured by individuals increasing effort to compensate for the detrimental effect of processing task-irrelevant threat information (Williams et al., 1997). The probe detection task does not rely on such interference effects, and has the advantage of providing a more direct index of allocation of visuospatial attention.

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To recap, the primary aim of the present experiments was to examine the effect of manipulating stimulus threat value on the direction of attentional bias. The main hypothesis, derived from the cognitive-motivational view, was that there should be a signi cant main effect of stimulus threat value on attentional bias, as all individuals should show greater vigilance for high threat than mild threat stimuli, irrespective of their trait anxiety level. Moreover, as noted earlier, our cognitive-motivational model and Williams et al.s model make opposite predictions regarding the relationship between increasing stimulus threat value and attentional biases in low trait anxiety. According to the cognitive-motivational view, low trait anxious individuals should show greater vigilance for high than mild threat stimuli. By contrast, following Williams et al.s model, low trait anxious individuals should show greater avoidance of threat, as stimulus threat value increases.

EXPERIMENT 1 Method
Overview. A pictorial version of the dot probe task was used to assess attentional bias, which was adapted from tasks using words and faces as stimuli (e.g., Bradley et al., 1997; MacLeod et al., 1986; Mogg et al., 1995). The two main types of stimuli were mild versus high threat pictorial scenes. Each threat scene was presented simultaneously with a nonthreat scene for 500 ms, and then a probe appeared in the location of one of the pictures after their offset. The threat scenes and probes appeared either on the left or right side of the screen, providing three within-subject variables: Threat value, threat location, and probe location. Following the main hypothesis (i.e., greater vigilance for high than mild threat pictures), there should be faster RTs for probes that occur in the same location as high threat (relative to nonthreat) scenes, compared with mild threat (relative to nonthreat) scenes. This effect should be re ected by a signi cant Threat value 3 Threat location 3 Probe location interaction in the RT data. Participants. These were 20 student volunteers, 13 female and 7 male, with a mean age of 21 years (range 18 22). Materials. The stimuli consisted of 20 high threat (e.g., mutilated bodies, murder victims) and 20 mild threat pictures (e.g., soldier holding gun); each paired with a nonthreat picture (e.g., person playing piano). These were selected from a pool of about 200 pictures taken from various sources (e.g., magazines, medical and criminology texts, video stills from adult movies, newspapers). The pictures were processed so that they were

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monochrome with a maximum size of 50 3 80 cm, and each was rated by six independent judges for threat and pleasantness value on 9-point scales (0 5 not at all; 8 5 extremely). All pictures were also rated for clarity on a 3-point scale, and those rated as unclear were excluded. The mean threat rating of each high threat scene was 6 (very threatening) or more, whereas the mean threat rating of each mild threat scene ranged between 2 and 5. All threat pictures had a mean pleasantness rating of 0. Each threat scene was paired with a nonthreat picture, matched as closely as possible for size and content (e.g., brightness, number of objects in scene). For each nonthreat picture, the mean threat rating was less than 1, and mean pleasantness rating ranged from 1 to 8. The nonthreat pictures paired with high threat scenes were matched for pleasantness ratings with the nonthreat pictures paired with mild threat scenes (means were 4.7 and 4.8, respectively). An additional 38 nonthreat pictures were selected for practice and ller trials; the latter were included so that a threat scene did not appear on every trial. Each pair of pictures was mounted on white card, such that the distance between the inner edges was 2 cm (visual angle approximately 2 degrees). The stimuli were presented in a two- eld tachistoscope manufactured by Electronics Developments.

Procedure
For ethical considerations, participants were informed before the task that they would be shown pictures varying widely in content, taken from magazines, books, newspapers, and ``X-rated lms ; and that they could withdraw at any time. The attentional task consisted of 5 practice and 54 main trials (comprising 20 high threat nonthreat pairs, 20 mild threat nonthreat pairs, and 14 nonthreat ller pairs). At the start of each trial, the experimenter gave a verbal prompt (``Ready ) before the picture pair was displayed for 500 ms. Immediately after the offset of the pictures, a small dot probe appeared in the position of one of them, and participants were asked to press one of two keys as quickly and as accurately as possible to indicate whether the probe occurred in the position of the left or right picture. Response latencies were recorded using a millisecond stop clock that started at the onset of the probe display, and stopped at the participants response. Threat pictures and probes were randomly allocated to appear in the left or right positions. The trials were presented in one of two xed random orders; with half the sample receiving each order. Following the attentional task, the following questionnaires were completed: State and trait versions of the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961), and the Social Desirability Scale (SDS; Crowne & Marlowe, 1964). The latter was

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included because social desirability may be a confounding variable affecting self-report measures of anxiety (e.g., Mischel, 1968; Weinberger, Schwartz, & Davidson, 1979).

Results
Alpha level was set at 5% level, two-tailed, throughout both studies. Latency data from trials with errors were discarded, and following inspection of the RT data with box and whisker plots, latencies of 220 ms or less, or 600 ms or more, were excluded as outliers. The proportions of trials with errors (.02) and outliers (.01) were very low as expected from the simple nature of the RT task. Although detailed analyses of these data were prevented by marked oor effects and skewness, there was no evidence of anxiety group differences in either error or outlier rates (see later for group details). Mean response latencies were calculated for each condition and entered into a 2 3 2 3 2 repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), with three within-subjects variables of threat value (high vs. mild threat), location of threat scene (left vs. right), and probe location (left vs. right). There was a signi cant main effect of threat value, F(1, 19) 5 5.26, p , .05, as RTs were slower on trials with high rather than mild threat scenes (356 vs. 347 ms); and also of threat location, F(1, 19) 5 13.09, p , .05, as RTs were slower on trials where the threat scene was on the left rather than right (358 vs. 344 ms). These main effects were subsumed under a signi cant Threat value 3 Threat location 3 Probe location interaction, F(1, 19) 5 5.18, p , .05. To clarify this three-way interaction, attentional bias scores were calculated for each threat type, by subtracting the mean RTs when probes were in the same location as the threat scenes, from the mean RTs when they were in the opposite location (MacLeod & Mathews, 1988; Mogg et al., 1994). Thus, a bias score for high threat scenes was calculated separately for each participant from their RTs on trials with high threat nonthreat picture pairs. Bias scores were similarly calculated for trials with mild threat scenes. The bias score summarises the Threat location 3 Probe location interaction. Positive values of the bias score indicate vigilance for threat; negative values re ect avoidance. A key advantage of the analyses of bias scores is that they allow a direct test of our hypotheses regarding the effect of stimulus threat value on the change in attentional bias (i.e., is higher stimulus threat value associated with a change in attentional bias that re ects increased vigilance, or increased avoidance?). There was a signi cant difference between the attentional bias scores for high threat scenes versus those for mild threat scenes [means were 12 vs. 2 1 ms, respectively; paired t (19) 5 2.28, p , .05]. This result cor-

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responds directly to the three-way interaction of Threat value 3 Threat location 3 Probe location interaction in the RT data. The mean bias score for high threat scenes was signi cantly greater than zero, t(19) 5 2.19, p , .05, which is consistent with overall attentional vigilance for high threat scenes, relative to nonthreat scenes. The mean attentional bias score for mild threat scenes did not differ signi cantly from zero. The foregoing results indicate signi cantly greater vigilance for high threat than mild threat scenes in the sample as a whole, which supports our main hypothesis. To examine effects of trait anxiety, participants were divided into two groups according to whether or not their trait anxiety scores were less than the median of 37. Mean questionnaire scores (with SDs in parentheses) for the below-median and above-median trait anxiety groups, respectively, were 29.4 (5.4) and 44.3 (10.1) for trait anxiety; 32.2 (10.6) and 38.3 (6.9) for state anxiety; 4.7 (5.1) and 7.3 (6.5) for Beck Depression; and 14.8 (6.1) and 11.2 (3.8) for social desirability (n.s. were 9 and 11). The two groups did not differ signi cantly in social desirability, t(18) 5 1.62, n.s.), and there were no outlying SDS scores (each was within 2 SDs of the sample mean). With regard to the mood measures, the groups differed signi cantly in trait anxiety, t(18) 5 3.94, p , .01, but not in state anxiety, t (18) 5 1.54, n.s., or Beck depression, t(18) 5 0.98, n.s. A 2 3 2 mixed-design ANOVA of attentional bias scores was carried out with threat value and trait anxiety as independent variables. This showed a signi cant effect of threat value on attentional bias scores, as described earlier, F (1, 18) 5 5.13, p , .05; but this did not interact with trait anxiety (F , 1). See Figure 2 for mean attentional bias scores of the two groups, and Table 1 for mean RTs. To test the speci c hypothesis that low trait anxious individuals would show greater vigilance for high than mild threat scenes, the data from the
TABLE 1 Experiment 1: Mean reaction times (in ms) in each condition Below-median trait anxiety Threat type High threat Threat location Left Left Right Right Left Left Right Right Probe location Left Right Left Right Left Right Left Right Mean 351.8 367.0 357.0 342.8 355.7 345.8 340.0 332.7 (SD) (43.2) (56.8) (43.4) (40.0) (54.9) (53.0) (50.0) (46.9) Above-median trait anxiety Mean 360.6 372.6 349.8 343.7 355.4 352.5 343.9 344.0 (SD) (49.5) (57.4) (42.2) (55.2) (57.3) (40.4) (39.9) (42.1)

Mild threat

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Figure 2.

Experiment 1: Mean attentional bias scores (in ms) for mild and high threat scenes.

below-median trait anxiety group were analysed separately. This group showed signi cantly more vigilance for high threat scenes than for mild threat scenes [bias scores were 15 and 2 1 ms, respectively, t(8) 5 3.37, p , .05]. Their bias scores for high threat scenes were also signi cantly greater than zero ( t(8) 5 2.81, p , .05).

Discussion
The results of Experiment 1 indicated signi cantly greater vigilance for high threat than mild threat scenes. Moreover, this positive relationship between stimulus threat value and attentional bias was evident even within low trait anxious individuals, which is indeed consistent with the cognitive-motivational view. However, some issues should be noted which caution against drawing strong conclusions from these results in isolation. First, it would be helpful to establish that the present ndings are not speci c to the stimulus materials used in this study. If the results can be replicated with a different set of pictorial stimuli, this would provide important evidence regarding the generality of the effect. Second, the sample size was relatively small and participants had not been preselected on the basis of their anxiety scores, and so the groups were not

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highly differentiated in trait anxiety. Consequently, a second experiment was planned to test the same hypotheses as in Experiment 1, but with two major modi cations: Revised stimulus materials taken from a standardised picture set, and selection of a larger sample of participants with more extreme trait anxiety scores. An additional methodological change was that the task was presented using a computer in Experiment 2, rather than a tachistoscope. To recap, following the cognitive-motivational view, both high and low trait anxious individuals should show greater vigilance for high than mild threat stimuli (i.e., an effect of high vs. mild threat value on attentional bias, irrespective of trait anxiety). On the other hand, according to Williams et al.s model, high trait anxious individuals should show increased vigilance for stimuli with higher threat value, but low trait anxious individuals should show greater avoidance as threat value increases (i.e., an interaction effect of threat value and trait anxiety on attentional bias).

EXPERIMENT 2 Method
Participants. Eighty-three students volunteered for the study and returned by post a shortened trait version of the Pro le of Mood States which included six anxiety items (McNair, Lorr, & Droppleman, 1981). Those scoring in the upper and lower quartile ranges of this screening measure of trait anxiety (score range 0 24) were invited to take part, of which 20 men and 20 women were tested. See Results section for details. Materials. The stimuli were taken from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1995), in which each picture had normative rating data on affective valence, on a 9-point scale ranging from unpleasant (1) to pleasant (9). The pictures were screened by the experimenters for their relevance to threat, favouring pictures with similar content to threat words that have been widely used as stimuli in previous research into attentional biases (e.g., ``attack , ``illness , ``mutilated , ``trapped , ``disaster ; MacLeod et al., 1986; Mogg et al., 1995). Then the valence ratings were used to select 24 high threat pictures (e.g., mutilated body, man attacking woman with knife, baby with tumour; valence range 1.5 2.5; mean 5 1.9), and 24 mild threat pictures (e.g., soldiers with tank, man behind bars; valence range 3.0 4.2; mean 5 3.6). The stimulus selection procedure also favoured those pictures with highest agreement

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between the valence norms and the threat ratings described later. Each threat scene was paired with a nonthreat picture (e.g., athlete, healthy baby; valence range 4.4 8.3; mean 5 6.5), while matching as closely as possible within each pair for colour, shape and nature of focal object. The nonthreat pictures paired with high threat scenes were matched for valence ratings with the nonthreat pictures paired with mild threat scenes (means were 6.7 and 6.3, respectively). Sexually explicit scenes from the IAPS were not included in the stimulus sets. To check that the valence ratings were comparable with ratings of threat value, the scenes were rated for threat value by four independent judges on an anchored 7-point scale (1 5 not at all threatening, 7 5 very threatening). The pictures were presented to the judges in random order on a computer screen, each for 500 ms (same duration as used in the attentional task), and threat was de ned as ``the degree of physical harm or danger to others which the picture depicts and/or the degree of uneasiness or fear which the picture makes you feel . Mean threat ratings were 6.4 (SD 5 0.4) for high threat and 4.1 (SD 5 1.1) for mild threat scenes, which differed signi cantly, t (46) 5 10.04, p , .001. The mean rating of nonthreat scenes was 1.4 (SD 5 0.5). There were signi cant differences between mild threat versus nonthreat scenes, t(23) 5 12.47, p , .001; and high threat versus nonthreat scenes, t(23) 5 45.61, p , .001. There was no difference in threat value between the nonthreat pictures paired with high threat scenes, and those paired with mild threat scenes (t , 1). The threat ratings correlated highly with the valence norms from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) (r 5 2 .89). An additional 24 nonthreat picture pairs were prepared as llers, so that a threat picture was not presented on every trial. The llers were similar in valence to the nonthreat scenes (mean valence 5 6.6). An additional 12 picture pairs were also selected for use on practice trials. The digitised pictures were converted to an indexed 256 colour palette, and adjusted in size so that each was approximately 11.5 3 8.6 cm when displayed on the screen. The distance between the inner edges of the pictures in each pair was 2.6 cm; and the distance between the two probe positions was 10.4 cm. Participants were seated 100 cm from the screen. The task was presented using MEL Version 2 software, on a PC 486 (Viglen 4DX 266), with a 15 inch VGA colour monitor, and a Viglen DFK2020UK keyboard (the latter has a low timing error for RTs; Mogg & Bradley, 1995).

Procedure
For ethical considerations, participants were told that they would be shown some pictures from the IAPS, which varied widely in content, and that they should inform the experimenter if they preferred not to be shown unplea-

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sant scenes, and that they could withdraw at any time. A state version of the Positive and Negative Affectivity Scales (PANAS; Watson & Clark, 1984) was then used to assess mood state. Participants next completed the main attentional task, which consisted of 14 practice and 72 experimental trials (comprising 24 high threat nonthreat pairs, 24 mild threat nonthreat pairs, and 24 ller pairs). At the start of each trial, a xation cross was displayed in the centre of the screen for 1000 ms, followed by the picture pair for 500 ms. The dot probe was displayed immediately after the offset of the pictures, until response. Participants were told to press one of two keys as quickly and as accurately as possible to indicate whether the probe occurred in the position of the left or right picture. The intertrial interval varied randomly between 500 and 1500 ms. Threat pictures and probes appeared on the left or right with equal frequency. The trials were presented in a new random order for each participant. Two versions of the task were used which counterbalanced the relation between the picture pairs and probes (e.g., for each critical picture pair, the probe appeared in the same position as the threat picture in one version, but in the opposite position in the other version), and half the subjects received one version of the task, and half the other version. After the pictorial scenes task, mood was reassessed using the PANAS, followed by a supplementary attentional task using face stimuli which addressed a subsidiary methodological issue.3 Finally, participants completed the state and trait versions of the STAI, the BDI and a 10-item form of the Marlowe Crowne SDS (Strahan & Gerbasi, 1972; this form X1 was found by Fischer & Fick, 1993, to correlate .96 with the full version).

Results
Group characteristics. Two participants had unusually high social desirability scores (each scored 8 out of a maximum score of 10), and a box and whisker plot con rmed these were outliers (for the rest of the sample, mean SDS 5 3.9, SD 5 1.6). Their data were excluded because high levels of defensiveness have a confounding effect on measures of selfreported anxiety and attentional bias (e.g., Eysenck, 1997; Fox, 1993; Mischel, 1968). The sample was divided into two groups on the basis of
This subsidiary task replicated that of Bradley, Mogg, Falla, and Hamilton (1998) using face stimuli shown for 500 ms, but with a different probe discrimination task. In Bradley et al. (1998), participants were required to discriminate the type of the probe (: vs. ..), rather than the position of the probe (left vs. right), as used in the present experiments. The results obtained here closely replicated those of Bradley et al. (1998), and so the particular probe type used seems unimportant in demonstrating attentional biases for pictorial stimuli. The method and results of this supplementary task are not reported in detail here because they are not relevant to the main hypotheses under investigation.
3

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a median split on STAI-trait anxiety scores. The STAI was used to divide the groups because it is a widely used measure of trait anxiety which allowed a direct comparison with the results of Experiment 1, and which was also completed under standardised conditions (unlike the postal screening measure of POMS anxiety). The groups did not differ significantly in age [mean was 20 years, range 18 23, t(36) 5 1.83, n.s.], or in gender ratio [male/female ratio was 8: 11 in low trait, and 11: 8 in high trait group]. Mean questionnaire scores are given in Table 2. The two groups differed signi cantly in trait anxiety, t(36) 5 7.87, p , .05; state anxiety, t(36) 5 3.91, p , .05; Beck depression, t (36) 5 4.05, p , .05; but not in SDS scores (t , 1). State NA scores were log transformed (to normalise their distributions) before being entered into a 2 3 2 ANOVA with trait anxiety group (high, low) and time (before vs. after scenes task) as independent variables. This showed a signi cant effect of group, F (1, 36) 5 4.42, p , .05, with
TABLE 2 Experiment 2: Questionnaires scores and mean reaction times (in ms) in each condition for high and low trait anxiety groups Low trait anxiety Mean STAI-trait STAI-state Beck Depression Inventory Social Desirability Scale (short-form) State Negative Affect: Time Time State Positive Affect: Time Time Picture type High threat Picture location Left Left Right Right Left Left Right Right 1 2 1 2 30.7 33.0 3.5 4.0 2.3 1.9 19.6 17.7 (SD) (3.3) (7.3) (2.6) (1.6) (3.7) (3.3) (6.8) (7.3) High trait anxiety Mean 50.1 44.6 10.4 3.8 4.8 4.9 18.0 16.7 (SD) (10.2) (10.4) (7.0) (1.5) (5.3) (6.0) (6.6) (7.6)

Probe location Left Right Left Right Left Right Left Right 370.3 377.2 369.1 375.5 375.9 355.0 353.4 368.7 (51.5) (49.8) (56.1) (45.3) (47.9) (41.5) (37.6) (36.6) 388.9 394.6 401.9 388.3 395.8 392.9 394.1 387.2 (60.0) (69.8) (69.2) (66.1) (65.1) (53.7) (69.5) (75.4)

Mild threat

Note: STAI, State Trait Anxiety Inventory; Time 1, before scenes task; Time 2, after scenes task.

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higher NA in the high than low trait anxious group (4.9 vs. 2.1), which did not vary over time (F , 1). A 2 3 2 ANOVA of state PA scores showed a signi cant effect of time, F (1, 36) 5 7.75, p , .05, with mean PA reducing from 18.8 to 17.2 during the scenes task; but no effects involving trait anxiety (Fs , 1). Thus, despite the unpleasant nature of some of the stimuli in the attentional task, this did not result in increased negative mood state (although there was a general lowering in positive mood). Attentional task. Latency data from trials with errors were discarded and, after examining the RT data with box and whisker plots, latencies of 220 ms or less, or 700 ms or more, were excluded as outliers. As in Experiment 1, the proportions of trials with errors (.01) and outliers (.01) were very low as expected from the simple nature of the task and there was no evidence of anxiety group differences in either error or outlier rates. Mean RTs were calculated for each condition from trials with threat scenes (see Table 2) and entered into a 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 mixed-design ANOVA, with three within-subjects variables of threat value (high vs. mild threat), threat location (left vs. right), and probe location (left vs. right), and one between-subjects variable of trait anxiety group (high vs. low). There were signi cant interactions of Threat value 3 Threat location 3 Probe location, F(1, 36) 5 4.09, p 5 .05, and of Trait anxiety 3 Threat location 3 Probe location, F (1, 36) 5 5.55, p , .05. There were no other signi cant results [e.g., main effect of Trait anxiety: F (1, 36) 5 2.21, p 5 .15; Trait anxiety 3 Threat value 3 Threat location 3 Probe location interaction: F , 1]. To clarify the signi cant three-way interactions in the RT data, attentional bias scores were calculated for each threat type and participant, in the same way as in Experiment 1 (see Figure 2 for means). A 2 3 2 mixeddesign ANOVA of attentional bias scores was carried out with threat value and trait anxiety as independent variables. This showed a signi cant main effect of threat value [F(1, 36) 5 4.09, p 5 .05; this result corresponds to the Threat value 3 Threat location 3 Probe location interaction in the RT data]. There was signi cantly greater vigilance for high threat scenes than for mild threat scenes (mean bias scores were 5.0 ms and 2 8.0 ms, respectively). This signi cant effect of stimulus threat value on attentional bias replicates our key nding from Experiment 1, and is consistent with the main hypothesis. There was also a signi cant main effect of trait anxiety on attentional bias scores [F (1, 36) 5 5.55, p , .05; this result corresponds to the Trait anxiety 3 Threat location 3 Probe location interaction in the RT data]. The high trait anxious group showed signi cantly more vigilance for threat, relative to nonthreat, scenes compared with the low trait anxious group (mean bias score averaged across high and mild threat stimuli was 5.8 ms for

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Figure 3.

Experiment 2: Mean attentional bias scores (in ms) for mild and high threat scenes.

high trait group, and 2 8.9 ms for low trait group). The interaction effect of Threat value 3 Trait anxiety on attentional bias scores was far from signi cant (F , 1). The main effect of trait anxiety on attentional bias scores remained signi cant even when the effect of Beck depression scores was controlled in a covariance analysis, F (1, 35) 5 4.52, p , .05. To test the speci c hypothesis that low trait anxious individuals would show greater vigilance for high than mild threat scenes, their data were analysed separately. The low trait group did indeed show signi cantly more vigilance for high threat than for mild threat scenes; bias scores were 0.3 and 2 18.1 ms, respectively, t(18) 5 2.37, p , .05; see Figure 3. The mean bias score for mild threat scenes was signi cantly less than zero, t(18) 5 2.95, p , .05. These results indicate that low trait anxious individuals showed avoidance of mild threat scenes, relative to nonthreat scenes, and that their avoidance of threat reduced as the stimulus threat value increased.

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GENERAL DISCUSSION
The results from both experiments are consistent in indicating a signi cant main effect of stimulus threat value on attentional bias. That is, as stimulus threat value increased, attentional bias scores for threat shifted in a positive direction (i.e., the bias scores indicated either increased vigilance or reduced avoidance of threat, as stimulus threat value increased). Moreover, in both experiments, this main effect was evident in individuals with low trait anxiety. The latter nding is contrary to the view put forward by Williams et al. (1988, 1997), which predicted that low trait anxious individuals would show greater avoidance of high threat than low threat information. However, the results are consistent with the cognitive-motivational view (Mogg & Bradley, 1998). This predicted that, as the threat value of aversive stimuli increases from the mild to high range, individuals should become increasingly more likely to orient their attention towards, rather than away from, the location of the threat, irrespective of their trait anxiety level. The nding of a signi cant main effect of stimulus threat value on attentional bias was obtained in both experiments despite some major methodological differences between the studies. In Experiment 1, the stimuli were black and white pictures taken from a variety of sources (e.g., medical and legal texts, video stills), whereas in Experiment 2 the stimuli were colour pictures taken from the IAPS, which is a standardised picture set widely used in emotion research (Lang et al., 1995). The pictures were initially selected from the IAPS using the normative ratings of unpleasantness, and it was reassuring that these valence ratings correlated extremely highly with the ratings of threat value that we obtained for the pictures when displayed for 500 ms, which was the exposure duration used in the attentional task. Thus, despite using quite different stimuli, the results from both studies are concordant in indicating that the attentional bias to threat increases as a function of stimulus threat value within the mild to high range. There was an additional signi cant result in Experiment 2, which was an effect of trait anxiety on attentional bias. That is, high trait anxious individuals were generally more vigilant for threat scenes, relative to nonthreat scenes, compared with low trait anxious individuals. This result is also compatible with the cognitive-motivational view, which suggests that high trait anxious individuals are more likely to evaluate an unpleasant stimulus as having a higher threat value, compared with low trait anxious individuals and, consequently, are more likely to allocate attentional resources towards it. In Experiment 1, no signi cant difference in bias was found between the trait anxiety groups, although this may be accounted for by the sample of volunteers being smaller and not being

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selected for trait anxiety level in this preliminary study. In contrast, the two groups in the second experiment were better differentiated in terms of trait anxiety. Indeed, the latter study used a larger sample size, and preselected participants on a screening measure of trait anxiety (to reduce the proportion of those with mid range scores). This seems likely to explain increased sensitivity to trait anxiety-related effects in Experiment 2. One important question is the extent to which the present ndings can be reconciled with previous evidence of attentional biases from studies using single word stimuli. For example, it was noted earlier that two previous studies using the dot probe task found evidence that vigilance for threat words (shown for 500 ms) was most apparent in high trait anxious individuals under stress (MacLeod & Mathews, 1988; Mogg et al., 1994). In each study, there was also a nonsigni cant tendency for those with low trait anxiety to show increased avoidance of threat words when under stress. This trend seemed supportive of Williams et al.s model, in suggesting that as threat inputs increased (as state anxiety and/or stimulus threat value increased), low trait anxious individuals became more avoidant of threat (see upper panel of Figure 1). However, this interpretation of these results for word stimuli seems at odds with the present ndings for pictorial stimuli, where the low trait anxious groups showed reduced avoidance or increased vigilance for threat, as threat value increased. However, these ndings for both types of stimuli (i.e., words and pictures) may be accommodated within the cognitive-motivational view, which proposes that there is a nonlinear relationship between the attentional bias and the subjective threat value of the stimulus. Thus, for stimuli that range in valence between neutral and high threat, there should be no attentional bias for those evaluated as having no threat value. However, when stimuli are appraised as having low subjective threat value, there may be a tendency to direct the focus of attention away from them. Such avoidance of mildly aversive stimuli may have an adaptive function, in that it would facilitate the organism focusing attention on current goalrelevant activities while disregarding minor trivial unpleasant events or stimuli in the environment. Moreover, avoidance of mildly negative information may also play a useful role in mood-regulation (i.e., in helping to maintain a positive mood state). However, as the subjective threat value of a stimulus increases from the mild to high range, then attention is increasingly more likely to be directed towards its location. This tendency for high threat information to capture attentional resources is likely to be of evolutionary value, in facilitating rapid detection of and response to reallife sources of danger. The subjective threat value is determined not only by the nature of the stimulus, but also by other variables, such as its context (e.g., presence of safety cues), as well as trait anxiety; with high trait anxious individuals

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tending to overestimate the threat value of aversive stimuli (see lower panel of Figure 1). Several studies have suggested evidence of attentional avoidance of mildly aversive information, such as the trends for avoidance of threat words by low trait anxious individuals under stress (e.g., MacLeod & Mathews, 1988; Mogg et al., 1994), as well as avoidance of threat faces in those with low levels of dysphoria and anxiety (Bradley et al., 1997). Additional evidence of this phenomenon was also suggested by the results of Experiment 2, which indicated avoidance of mild threat pictorial scenes in the low trait anxious group. However, this tendency to avoid mild threat is not universally found in studies of attentional biases for words and pictures, and so it does not appear to be a robust phenomenon. For example, it was not found in Experiment 1, where the low trait group seemed unbiased in their attentional responses to mild threat scenes. Experiments 1 and 2 differed in several aspects, including not only the selection of participants and of stimuli, but also the mode of presentation (tachistoscope vs. computer). Contextual cues may play an important role in moderating the subjective evaluation of threat. For example, if peripheral ``safety cues are visible, an aversive picture may be judged as having lower subjective threat value (one anecdotal observation consistent with this view is the subjective impression that a horror lm is less frightening when watched in a well-lit rather than darkened room!). If this is the case, experimental evidence of attentional avoidance and vigilance may be in uenced by contextual information in the testing situation. For example, computer presentation of the task potentially allows peripheral visual information to be available indicating that the participant is in a relatively safe context (e.g., computer equipment and test room are visible), thereby reducing the subjective threat value of the stimulus pictures. However, with a tachistoscope (as used in Experiment 1), the visual eld can be restricted through a visor to the pictorial stimuli, so excluding any peripheral visual ``safety cues. This, in turn, might enhance the subjective threat value of the stimuli and their capacity to attract attention. It is of interest to note that, in Experiment 2, although low trait anxious individuals showed reduced avoidance of high threat compared with mild threat, they did not actually exhibit signi cant vigilance for the high threat scenes. It seems possible that, as a consequence of the presence of peripheral visual ``safety cues (the stimuli were displayed on a computer screen in Experiment 2), the subjective threat value of the high threat scenes may have been reduced, which may account for the lack of signi cant vigilance in the low trait anxiety group in Experiment 2. Thus, one might nd that if the presence of such safety cues is reduced, the degree of vigilance may be enhanced. It would seem useful for future research to take account of such methodological variables, such as availability of safety-relevant contextual information that might moderate attentional biases.

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Nevertheless, despite methodological differences between the experiments, they both produced the same main effect (i.e., the attentional bias became relatively more vigilant and less avoidant, as threat value increased, irrespective of trait anxiety), which supported the cognitive-motivational view rather than the prediction from Williams et al.s model. These two theoretical positions not only have differing implications regarding the mechanisms that underlie anxiety vulnerability (i.e., the role of biases in appraisal versus selective attention, as discussed earlier), but they also give rise to fundamentally different predictions regarding the processes that should be targeted by anti-anxiety treatments. For example, Williams et al.s model assumes that the attentional bias for threat is a key factor underlying susceptibility to anxiety (see upper panel of Figure 1), and so it follows that treatment should target this bias. For example, anxious patients may be trained to counteract their tendency to orient towards threat by adopting the avoidant attentional styles of low trait anxious individuals. On the other hand, such attentional retraining might be ineffective if the bias is due instead to automatic capture of attention by a stimulus that has been judged to have a high subjective threat value. If this is the case, it should be more productive to target in therapy those processes involved in valence evaluation. Indeed, a speci c aim of cognitive therapy is to facilitate the reappraisal of anxiety-eliciting stimuli and their situational context, and to replace fearful evaluations of events with more positive and safety-oriented appraisals (e.g., Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1986). Moreover, modi cation of the affective valence of fear-provoking stimuli also appears to be a key mechanism underlying the effectiveness of exposure-based treatments for anxiety disorders (e.g., Foa & McNally, 1996). These considerations suggest that research into the effectiveness of attentional retraining in treating anxiety disorders should take account of whether any bene cial effects are speci cally mediated by attentional retraining, per se, rather than the exposure component of the treatment procedure. Another issue concerns the effect of positive stimulus valence on attentional processes; as some studies, which have used words as stimuli, suggest that anxious individuals may be vigilant for emotional information in general, including both positive and negative material (e.g., Martin, sWilliams, & Clark, 1991). However, subsequent ndings suggest that this may occur primarily for positive words that are anxiety- or concernrelevant, rather than positive words in general (Mathews & Klug, 1993; Riemann & McNally, 1995). Fazio et al. (1994) proposed that stimuli in the ``object domain with strong positive or negative emotional content may attract attention, whereas negative information in the ``person domain may be especially potent in eliciting vigilance. Much of this work has relied on the use of verbal stimuli (although some studies have used face stimuli,

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e.g., Hansen & Hansen, 1988; Bradley et al., 1998) and it would seem useful to examine this issue in further experiments investigating attentional biases for negative pictorial information, relative to distinct classes of neutral and positive pictorial scenes. The present paper has been primarily concerned with biases in the initial allocation of attention to threat, because recent cognitive theories proposed that such biases play a crucial role in the aetiology and maintenance of anxiety (e.g., Eysenck, 1992; Mathews, 1990; Williams et al., 1988, 1997). It has been widely assumed that the RT data from the dot probe task (when a threat and nonthreat stimulus are presented for 500 ms before the probe) re ect the direction of initial orienting, rather than subsequent shifts of attention between the two stimuli (e.g., Williams et al., 1988). Indeed, evidence to support this assumption comes from a recent study where the direction of gaze was monitored while participants performed the dot probe task with pictorial stimuli presented for 500 ms (Bradley, Mogg, & Millar, 2000). The results showed that the attentional bias for negative versus positive stimuli estimated from the RT data was positively correlated with a corresponding bias in the direction of initial shift in gaze. It is clearly of theoretical importance to distinguish between different aspects of selective attention, such as initial orienting versus sustained attention (e.g., LaBerge, 1995). For example, phobic individuals may initially and automatically orient attention towards a fear-relevant stimulus, as a result of its high subjective threat value, but they may not necessarily maintain their attention on it. Indeed, they might subsequently avert their attention from the feared stimulus, in order to reduce their discomfort. We have speculated elsewhere that such a ``vigilance avoidance pattern of attentional bias might contribute to the maintenance of anxiety disorders, for example, by interfering with habituation to fearprovoking stimuli (see review by Mogg & Bradley, 1998, for further discussion). Thus, it would seem helpful to clarify further the effects of anxiety and stimulus threat value not only on initial orienting, but also on later aspects of attentional processes. Indeed, research into the speci c mechanisms involved in appraisal of and selective attention to threat has potentially important implications not only for identifying the cognitive variables underlying the aetiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders, but also for the development of more effective anti-anxiety treatments.
Manuscript received 28 April 1998 Revised manuscript received 28 May 1999

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