The Relationship Of Adult Attachment Orientation And Attentional Bias In Stressful Context

One basic statement of attachment theory is that all human beings are born with an attachment behavior system aimed at maintaining proximity to attachment figures. The internal working models, which are formed on the base of the individual's attachment history, direct the cognitive, the affect, and the behavior of the individual in relational context. While the research on the mechanisms that the internal working models work is still at a start level. This research is aimed to investigate the relation between adult attachment orientation and attentional bias in threatening context.In this research, we use proximity words and distance words as target words, and adopt the dot-probe methodology, investigate the relation between adult attachment orientation and attentional bias in threatening context. We investigate the individual's tendency to seek proximity in threatening context, the influence of the individual's attachment orientation on attentional bias, and the effects of the cognitive load on the relation between attachment orientation and attentional bias. We get the results as below:1. Threatening context significantly increases the individuals' tendency to seek proximity, show as attentional vigilance to proximity words, and this tendency is not influenced by attachment orientation.2. In threatening context, attachment avoidance is associated with attentional avoidance to the distance words; attachment anxiety is associated with attentional avoidance to the distance words whatever in threatening context or not; trait anxiety is correlated with attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, but trait anxiety can not explain these effects.3. In threatening context, the relation between attachment avoidance and attentional bias to the distance words is influenced by cognitive load. In the condition of no cognitive load, attachment avoidance predicts the attentional avoidance of distance words. In the condition of cognitive load, attachment avoidance does not predict the attentional bias of distance words.