Biases of emotional attention (AB) are believed to be central to human (mal)adaptation and multiple forms of psychopathology. Yet, fundamental questions remain regarding the nature and empirical study of AB. We thus aimed to: (1) test a novel conceptualization and related operationalization of AB expression in time; and (2) illuminate the nature of AB and specifically its temporal expression. We examined AB expression in time by means of a novel Trial Level Bias Score (TL-BS) analysis of dot probe task data in two experiments -among spider phobics and healthy controls, and among smoking- Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Bias General IntroductionSelective attention to appetitive and aversive stimuli is important to human adaptation (Bar-Haim et al., 2010; Cisler & Koster, 2010; Robinson, Charney, Overstreet, Vytal, & Grillon, 2012). Due to the functional importance of early and fast processing of motivationally-relevant information, theories have argued that selective attention will be allocated to emotionally-evocative information (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1997; Öhman, Flykt, & Lundqvist, 2000). Dysregulation in this "emotional attention" process -termed Attentional Bias (AB) -has been linked to a cascade of information processing biases and behavior underlying the development and maintenance of multiple forms of psychopathology and addiction (Bar-Haim, Lamy, Pergamin, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007; Cisler & Koster, 2010; Luijten et al., 2012; Mathews & MacLeod, 2005; Osinsky, Lösch, Hennig, Alexander, & MacLeod, 2012; Shechner et al., 2012). For example, threat-related AB has been linked to anxiety disorders (Bar-Haim et al., 2007; Van Bockstaele et al., 2014), AB for self-related information has been linked to depression (De Raedt & Koster, 2010), and AB for drug cues has been linked to addiction and substance abuse (Field, Munafò, & Franken, 2009). Accordingly, information processing biases and attentional biases specifically represent key etiological and maintenance factors in central theories of prevalent mental disorders (e.g., social anxiety: Clark & Wells, 1995; depression: De Raedt & Koster, 2010).In recent years, emotional attention and AB has emerged as an important research area of cognitive-affective science and basic and clinical psychopathology research -with hundreds of studies published annually. Most of these studies rely on modifications of well-investigated cognitiveexperimental tasks such as probe detection, spatial cueing, and visual search where behavioral response Temporal Dynamics of Attentional Bias 4 latencies (i.e., reaction time, RT) permit inferences regarding allocation of covert attention to "emotional" or motivationally-relevant information (Pashler, 1998; Weierich & Barrett, 2010).Similarly, other recent work has also evaluated overt attention (i.e., eye movement data; Armstrong & Olatunji, 2012; Bradley, Mogg, & Millar, 2000). Furthermore, scholars have increasingly attempted to understand the genetic and learning bases of ABs (Beevers, Wel...

The use of unreliable measures constitutes a threat to our understanding of psychopathology, because advancement of science using both behavioral and biologically-oriented measures can only be certain if such measurements are reliable. Two pillars of NIMH’s portfolio – the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative for psychopathology and the target engagement initiative in clinical trials – cannot succeed without measures that possess the high reliability necessary for tests involving mediation and selection based on individual differences. We focus on the historical lack of reliability of attentional bias measures as an illustration of how reliability can pose a threat to our understanding. Our own data replicate previous findings of poor reliability for traditionally-used scores, which suggests a serious problem with the ability to test theories regarding attentional bias. This lack of reliability may also suggest problems with the assumption (in both theory and the formula for the scores) that attentional bias is consistent and stable across time. In contrast, measures accounting for attention as a dynamic process in time show good reliability in our data. The field is sorely in need of research reporting findings and reliability for attentional bias scores using multiple methods, including those focusing on dynamic processes over time. We urge researchers to test and report reliability of all measures, considering findings of low reliability not just as a nuisance but as an opportunity to modify and improve upon the underlying theory. Full assessment of reliability of measures will maximize the possibility that RDoC (and psychological science more generally) will succeed.

Theory implicates attentional bias (AB) or dysregulated attentional processing of emotional information in the recurrence of major depressive episodes. However, empirical study of AB among remitted depressed patients is limited in scope and has yielded mixed findings. Mixed findings may be accounted for by how the field has conceptualized and thereby studied AB. We propose that a novel temporal dynamic process perspective on AB may help disambiguate extant findings and elucidate the nature of AB in remitted depression. Thus, we reexamined Dot Probe data among remitted depressed patients (RMD; n ϭ 328) and nondepressed controls (NDC; n ϭ 82) that previously yielded null effects when AB was quantified by means of the traditional aggregated mean bias score (Vrijsen et al., 2014). We reanalyzed data using a novel computational approach that extracts a series of bias estimations from trial to trial (Zvielli, Bernstein, & Koster, 2015). Key features of these dynamic process signals revealed moderate to excellent reliability relative to the traditional aggregated mean bias scores. These features of AB dynamics-specifically temporal variability in AB including AB toward and away from emotional stimuli-were significantly elevated among RMDs relative to NDCs. Moreover, among RMDs, a greater number of past depressive episodes were associated with elevation in these features of AB dynamics. Effects were not accounted for by residual depressive symptoms or social anxiety symptoms. Findings indicate that dysregulation in attentional processing of emotional information reflected in AB dynamics may be key to depression vulnerability.

The aim of the present study was to question untested assumptions about the nature of the expression of Attentional Bias (AB) towards and away from threat stimuli. We tested the idea that high trait anxious individuals (N = 106; M(SD)age = 23.9(3.2) years; 68% women) show a stable AB towards multiple categories of threatening information using the emotional visual dot probe task. AB with respect to five categories of threat stimuli (i.e., angry faces, attacking dogs, attacking snakes, pointed weapons, violent scenes) was evaluated. In contrast with current theories, we found that 34% of participants expressed AB towards threat stimuli, 20.8% AB away from threat stimuli, and 34% AB towards some categories of threat stimuli and away from others. The multiple observed expressions of AB were not an artifact of a specific criterion AB score cut-off; not specific to certain categories of threat stimuli; not an artifact of differences in within-subject variability in reaction time; nor accounted for by individual differences in anxiety-related variables. Findings are conceptualized as reflecting the understudied dynamics of AB expression, with implications for AB measurement and quantification, etiology, relations, and intervention research.

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