| Contemporary perspectives of anxiety suggest attentional biases toward threat are hallmark symptoms of a wide range of emotion-related disorders. While theoretical debate has surrounded the nature of attentional biases as related to anxiety problems, theorists concur that clarifying the nature of attentional biases is vital for the specification of appropriate and effective interventions. In the current study, a startle modification paradigm was employed to clarify questions pertaining to the early time course of how threatening information is processed. Low and highly trait anxious students were exposed to 4 different lead intervals and 5 different word categories. Partially supporting previous findings, a significant Group x Category x Lead Interval interaction was obtained for blink magnitude. Follow-up comparisons confirmed that high trait anxious subjects exhibited significantly greater blink facilitation relative to neutral words at a lead interval of 50 ms, whereas this difference was not observed for low trait anxious controls. Earlier studies suggesting that blink facilitation to threat is maximal at 60 ms relative to neutrals were not supported. Further, highly trait anxious participants also exhibited blink facilitation to low arousing pleasant words, relative to neutral words at 50 ms. |
