Temporal Dynamics Of Attentional Bias Towards Test-related Threatening Stimuli In Test Anxiety

In the present study, we used the event-related potentials (ERP) and Eye-tracking technique to explore the attentional bias towards test-related threatening (TRT) and test-unrelated threatening (TUT)stimuli in test anxiety. The classical and modified dot-probe tasks were adopted,and the standardized Test Anxiety Picture and Vocabulary were assessed and employed as stimuli.The main results and conclusions obtained in the series of experiments are as the following:1. Compared with low test-anxious (LTA) subjects, high test-anxious (HTA) subjects showed attentional bias towards TRT words presented for 200 msec, and ERP data revealed enhanced N1 amplitude to TRT cues and enhanced N200 amplitude to targets after presentations of TRT words and decreased LPP amplitude in HTA individuals, but decreased N200 amplitude to targets after presentations of TRT words in LTA individuals.2. When the cue presentation time was 50 msec, HTA subjects showed the trend of vigilance to low TRT pictures, and showed facilitated disengagement from high TRT pictures; and ERP data revealed enhanced C1 amplitude and N1 peak to the cue, and enhanced N1 and P1 amplitude to the target in HTA relative to LTA subjects.3. When the cue presentation time was 500 msec,HTA subjects showed avoidance of both high and low TRT pictures and difficulty disengagement from them; and ERP data revealed enhanced N1 peak to the cue,and enhanced N1 peak and P1 amplitude to the target in HTA relative to LTA subjects.4. When the cue presentation time was 3000 msec, HTA subjects showed initial orienting to low TRT pictures, and avoidance of high TRT pictures at the very end; but, as cognitive load to increase, HTA subjects showed difficulty disengagement from high TRT words.5. HTA subjects showed the temporal dynamics of attentional bias towards TRT stimuli, that is, the initial attentional orienting to TRT in test anxiety emerges very early, at pre-attentive processing stage, and engagement with test-related threat and /or avoidance of test-related threat at late strategic processing stage.The components of attentional bias vary as a function of the cognitive load, and threat intensity.Limitations of the present study, implications of the current findings, and recommendations for future research are also discussed.