Carryover effects on spatial attentional bias and subclinical PTSD symptoms

What is it about?

Attentional bias - the involuntary tendency to select or inhibit certain sources of information - has been commonly measured using Dot-Probe (or Visual Probe) Tasks. The question in this study was whether the bias was influenced by trial-to-trial carryover effects: That is, is there a persistent state change that occurs when you respond to a probe appearing at the location of a threatening cue? I was also interested in testing whether, if there is such a kind of "attentional stickiness", it was related to subclinical symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is known to be related to attentional biases involving threat, but the pattern of relationships found in the literature is complex. Perhaps abnormal carryover could prove to be a relatively simple kind of PTSD-related process.

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Why is it important?

The results provided a first proof-of-principle that carryover effects exist and appear to be related to psychopathological symptoms. Further study will hopefully elucidate such relationships.