The process of allocating attention is a cognitive process that is very complex. The intricate mechanisms behind attention allow the human mind to prioritize incoming information so that an individual can focus on a specific stimulus. Attention is both limited and selective, so the human mind must decide on which information to concentrate. An aspect of attention that has gained a lot of popularity among psychological research is attentional bias. Attentional bias is a cognitive bias in which an individual’s perception is affected by their thoughts and emotions. (Cherry, 2015).
This paper will analyze the past research done on the relationship between emotional disorders, such as depression and generalized anxiety, and the attentional bias …show more content…
The stimulus in their experiment was changed from a word stimuli to a face stimuli because it is believed that face stimuli is more realistic in that test subjects are more prone to being exposed to these stimuli in every day life. The procedure employed in this experiment was very similar to Mcleod, Mathews, and Tata’s. Once again, the results correspond with past research. The anxious group displayed attentional bias towards the faces that portrayed threat. In the second half of the experiment, the anxious group showed bias towards both types of emotional faces. Since this experiment was carried out in two halves, the change in attentional bias was evident. Various mechanisms for this result were hypothesized. First, it is plausible that the anxious group may have developed a bias for the positive faces in an attempt to reduce the negative feelings brought on by the threatening faces. Another possibility is that the positive faces started appearing threatening to the anxious group (1999). This makes sense because individuals with social anxiety may perceive smiling faces as threatening. This establishment of bias toward the positive faces as well in the second half of the experiment displays a development of a processing mechanism in anxious individual. This brings up the difference between automatic interpretations and individual strategies and how the difference in these could lead to insight on cognitive treatment and therapy. Although automatic interpretations at first created bias toward only negative faces in the test subjects, individual strategies created a bias toward the positive face as well. Cognitive distortions are automatic thoughts that reinforce negative thinking. One aspect of CBT is identifying these automatic thoughts and restructuring them in a way that gets rid of them. This experiment provides evidence that it might be more effective
This paper will analyze the past research done on the relationship between emotional disorders, such as depression and generalized anxiety, and the attentional bias …show more content…
The stimulus in their experiment was changed from a word stimuli to a face stimuli because it is believed that face stimuli is more realistic in that test subjects are more prone to being exposed to these stimuli in every day life. The procedure employed in this experiment was very similar to Mcleod, Mathews, and Tata’s. Once again, the results correspond with past research. The anxious group displayed attentional bias towards the faces that portrayed threat. In the second half of the experiment, the anxious group showed bias towards both types of emotional faces. Since this experiment was carried out in two halves, the change in attentional bias was evident. Various mechanisms for this result were hypothesized. First, it is plausible that the anxious group may have developed a bias for the positive faces in an attempt to reduce the negative feelings brought on by the threatening faces. Another possibility is that the positive faces started appearing threatening to the anxious group (1999). This makes sense because individuals with social anxiety may perceive smiling faces as threatening. This establishment of bias toward the positive faces as well in the second half of the experiment displays a development of a processing mechanism in anxious individual. This brings up the difference between automatic interpretations and individual strategies and how the difference in these could lead to insight on cognitive treatment and therapy. Although automatic interpretations at first created bias toward only negative faces in the test subjects, individual strategies created a bias toward the positive face as well. Cognitive distortions are automatic thoughts that reinforce negative thinking. One aspect of CBT is identifying these automatic thoughts and restructuring them in a way that gets rid of them. This experiment provides evidence that it might be more effective