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Attentional Bias in Emotional Disorders

Article  in  Journal of Abnormal Psychology · March 1986

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Journal of Abnormal Piychofcgy Copyright 1986 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1986, Vol. 95, No. 1, 15-20 «Q|.843X/86/$00.75

Attentional Bias in Emotional Disorders

Colin MacLeod, Andrew Mathews, and Philip Tata
University of London, London, England

Recent research has suggested that anxiety may be associated with processing biases that favor the
encoding of emotionally threatening information. However, the available data can be accommodated
by alternative explanations, including response bias accounts. The current study introduces a novel
paradigm that circumvents such interpretative problems by requiring subjects to make a neutral
response (button press) to a neutral stimulus (visual dot probe). The position of this dot probe was
manipulted on a VDU (visual display unit) screen relative to visually displayed words, which could
either be threat related or neutral in content. Probe detection latency data were then used to determine
the impact of threat-related stimuli on the distribution of visual attention. Clinically anxious (but not
clinically depressed) subjects consistently shifted attention toward threat words, resulting in reduced
detection latencies for probes appearing in the vicinity of such stimuli. Normal control subjects, on
the other hand, tended to shift attention away from such material. The results were interpreted as
supporting the existence of anxiety-related encoding bias, and it is suggested that this cognitive mech-
anism may contribute to the maintenance of such mood disorders.

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in the relation
between mood and cognition, with most research focusing on
depression. The consistent finding has been that an elevated level
of depression leads to a bias in recall, which favors the retrieval
of mood-congruent information. Whether the depression is ex-
perimentally induced (Clark & Teasdale, in press; Teasdale &
Fogarty, 1979; Teasdale & Taylor, 1981; Teasdale, Taylor, & Fo-
garty, 1980) or naturally occurring (Bradley & Mathews, 1983;
Clark & Teasdale, 1982; Derry & Kuiper, 1981; Fogarty & Hem-
sley, 1983; Frith et al., 1983; Mathews & Bradley, 1983), the
evidence suggests that depressed subjects recall more self-rated
unpleasant memories than pleasant ones.
Although such findings may have considerable implications
for the understanding of clinical depression, it is important to
note that few studies have examined the relation between mood
and recall for other affective states. Generalized anxiety is a
problem that affects between 5% and 30% of the population,
depending on the criteria adopted (Lader & Marks, 1971), yet
little experimental effort has been directed toward illuminating
the cognitive characteristics of this mood disorder.
According to Bower's (1981) network model, anxious subjects
should display recall biases that parallel those already demon-
strated in depression. A second prediction outlined by Bower
was that selective attention would be biased toward the encoding
of mood-congruent material. Bower suggests that this bias should
lead to increased perceptual salience for such material. There is
a good deal of empirical evidence to support such a relation
between selective attention and situational or phobic anxiety.
This research was supported by a grant from the Medical Research
Council, United Kingdom. Thanks are due to C. Halkiopoulos, whose
unpublished doctoral research at Birkbeck College, London, motivated
the development of the current paradigm.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Colin
MacLeod, Department of Psychology, St. George's Hospital Medical
School, Tooting, London SW17 ORE, England.
Parkinson and Rachman (1981), using an auditory recognition
task, demonstrated that mothers who were anxious because their
children were about to undergo surgery identified significantly
more stress-related words than control subjects in the presence
of distracting auditory information. Burgess et al. (1981) found
that individuals experiencing phobic anxiety showed an increased
ability to detect fear-relevant words presented to the unattended
channel in a dichotic listening task. However, because these words
were individually selected for each subject, familiarity or expec-
tancy may account for these results. Mathews and MacLeod (in
press) conducted a related study concerned with generalized
anxiety, where the unattended message was too quiet to enable
detection. For the anxious, but not for the control subjects, threat-
related material in this unattended channel was found to draw
disproportionately on processing resources, as evidenced by dif-
ferential impairment on a simultaneous, simple reaction-time
task.
Adaptations of the Stroop color-naming test have also generally
supported the hypothesis that threatening words command more
processing resources in anxious subjects. Ray (1979) has found
that students in a preexamination period showed longer color-
naming latencies for words related to examination anxiety than
for neutral words, and this effect was strongest in those with high
state anxiety. Watts, McKenna, Sharrock, and Trezise (in press)
found that subjects suffering from phobic anxiety show dispro-
portionate latencies to color name words related to the feared
stimuli. Mathews and MacLeod (1985) demonstrated that gen-
eralized anxiety is associated with increased color-naming laten-
cies for words related to physical threat (e.g., disease, mutilated)
and social threat (e.g., lonely, failure). Furthermore, the degree
of color-naming retardation shown on each type of threat words
was found to interact with the subject's dominant concern.
Though all anxious subjects took longer to color name the social
threat words, only those reporting predominantly physically re-
lated worries were retarded on the physical threat words.
The current article reports a study that was designed to in-
vestigate the basis of the cognitive bias in anxiety in more detail.
16 C. MACLEOD, A. MATHEWS, AND P. TATA
As yet, the hypothesis that threat-related material shows an en-
hanced ability to capture the selective system in anxious subjects
has been tested only indirectly. Two types of data that lend sup-
port to such a proposal have been reviewed.
The first set of findings is that fear-relevant words are detected
more accurately by anxious subjects (Burgess et al., 1981; Par-
kinson & Rachman, 1981). Although this may indeed be due to
a bias in the allocation of attentional resources toward mood-
congruent material, it may simply reflect a mood-dependent re-
sponse bias. If all subjects extract the same degree of partial
information, which allows them to guess at the words' identity
with some degree of accuracy, and if subjects favor guesses that
are congruent with their current mood, then the observed effect
would follow. Clearly, however, it would not reflect an encoding
bias.
The second set of findings, reviewed above, show that perfor-
mance on a timed task is more severely impaired in anxious
subjects when threat-related rather than neutral items are pre-
sented as distractors (Mathews & MacLeod, 1985, in press; Ray,
1979; Watts et al., in press). However, the explanation that such
material disproportionately attracts processing resources in those
anxious subjects is not the only possibility. It may be that anxious
subjects process both the neutral and the threat-related distractor
material to the same degree but that the presence of the latter
intensifies the negative affective state of those subjects to a level
where it impairs reaction time.
The current study introduces a paradigm that enables direct
measurement of how visual attention is distributed. Words were
simultaneously presented to two areas on the VDU (visual display
unit) screen of a microcomputer. The ensuing distribution of
visual attention was measured by a secondary task involving the
detection of a visual probe, which could appear in the spatial
location of either word, immediately after the display of that
word was terminated. This probe was a small dot, and subjects
were required to press a hand-held button immediately when
the dot was detected. Detection latency, which previous research
has implicated as a sensitive measure of visual attention (e.g.,
Hoffman & Nelson, 1980; Navon & Margalit, 1983), was recorded
for each probe. The trials providing the data of interest were
those in which one of the two words was an emotionally threat-
ening term. By examining the impact of such a word on the
relative probe detection latencies in the two spatial areas, it was
possible to determine whether visual attention had shifted toward
or away from such stimuli.
Two groups of subjects were initially considered. One group
comprised 16 subjects with a primary diagnosis of generalized
anxiety, whereas the other was made up of 16 nonanxious,
matched control subjects. Subsequently, a group of 16 subjects
with a primary diagnosis of depression were also considered.
The hypothesis under test was that anxious subjects, but not
controls, would shift attention toward the emotionally threatening
material, resulting in decreased detection latencies for probes
that follow threat words in comparison with probes that follow
neutral words. Following evidence that this pattern of results was
indeed shown by anxious but not control subjects, a depressed
group was tested to establish whether such an attentional bias
characterizes negative mood states in general or is instead specific
to anxiety.
Table 1
Mean Age and Questionnaire Scores Showing Significance
of Differences Between Subject Groups
Low High
Measure anxiety anxiety P
Mean age* 36.9 32.16 ns
Mean Mill Hill Synonym
Test score 23.4 22.16 ns
Mean BDI score 7.6 13.9 .05
Mean STAI state
anxiety score 36.3 44.7 .05
Mean STAI trait
anxiety score 39.5 52.5 .01
Note. BDI = Beck Depression Inventory; STAI = State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory.
" In years.
Method
Subjects
A total of 32 subjects were tested initially. Sixteen had been referred
by their general practitioner for anxiety management training, and 16
were selected from the psychology department subject pool to act as
controls. All anxious subjects had been given a diagnosis of generalized
anxiety disorder and any who exhibited substantial phobic avoidance or
obsessional symptomatology were excluded. These anxious subjects were
further divided into two subgroups of 8 each, according to whether they
reported worrying primarily over physically related concerns, such as
illness or injury, or over socially related concerns, such as coping with
the demands and expectations of others. Controls were matched with
patients for gender, age, and verbal intelligence (Mill Hill Synonym Test).
All subjects completed both the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory
and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Full subject details are provided
in Table 1. It can be seen that the patient group, as expected, scored
significantly higher on both state and trait anxiety than did the control
group. In fact, patients also scored higher than controls on the BDI, a
point that will be discussed subsequently. For the moment, it should be
emphasized that the primary diagnosis for all patients was generalized
anxiety.
Materials
The 48 emotionally threatening words used in this study were drawn
from previous research by the current authors (Mathews &. MacLeod,
1985, in press). Twenty-four were related to physical threat (e.g., injury,
agony, etc.), and the other 24 were related to social threat (e.g., criticized,
ashamed, etc.). The words used are listed in Table 2. Each threat word
was paired with a neutral word matched for both length and frequency
to make 48 critical word pairs. Another 240 neutral word pairs were
randomly created, with each pair matched for word length, to act as filler
material.
The word pairs were presented using a modified Apple lie microcom-
puter and a Sanyo 12-in. (30.5-cm) green screen monitor. The modification
enabled the raster scan position to be controlled by the timing routines,
thus allowing visual probe reaction time to be recorded to 1 -ms accuracy.
The program presented each of the 288 word pairs briefly (500-ms
duration), with the words separated on the vertical axis of the VDU by
a distance of 3 cm (visual angle less than 2°). Dot probes occurred on
96 of the 288 trials and could replace either of the two displayed words.
Program execution time introduced a small constant interval of approx-
 ATTENTIONAL BIAS IN EMOTIONAL DISORDERS 17

imately 25 ms between the termination of the word display and the pre- Table 3
sentation of the dot probe. Mean Probe Detection Latencies in Milliseconds
On trials without probes the next pair of words followed in 1 s; on
probe trials the dot remained until subjects responded. Half of the trials Group/area of probe Threat in Threat in
on which the probes appeared involved 1 of the 48 critical pairs, described detection latency upper area lower area
above, and it was these trials alone that provided the data of interest. The
High anxiety
threat word in each critical pair could appear with equal probability in
Upper area 592.82 651.98
either of the two spatial locations. The probe then followed in the same
Lower area 694.53 662.58
location, or in the location of the neutral word, with equal probability.
Low anxiety
Thus, two factors were independently varied on the critical trials: the Upper area 540.41 523.63
position of the threat term (threat position) and the position of the sub- Lower area 583.65 615.99
sequent visual probe (probe position). The combination of these two
factors gave rise to four possible conditions, and for any subject, 12 of
the 48 critical trials appeared in each condition. Specific word pairs were groups factor (anxious patients vs. control subjects) and three fixed within-
balanced across conditions as the experiment progressed such that after groups factors (physical vs. social threat, threat position, and probe po-
every 4 subjects had been tested, each word pair had appeared once in sition). Subjects were included as a random factor in this analysis. If, as
each of the four conditions. predicted, the anxious but not the control group shifted attention toward
threat, then this should give rise to a three-way Groups X Threat Posi-
Procedure tion X Probe Position interaction.

Subjects initially completed both sections of the Spielberger State-

Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Mill
Results
Hill Synonym Test (Section B of the Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale). Then The mean probe detection latencies found for each condition
they sat in front of the VDU screen and received the following instructions:
and subject group are shown in Table 3. An ANOVA showed a
main effect of probe position, F(\, 30) = 14.17, p < .001. Probe
In this experiment you are going to see words presented on the screen
detection latencies were considerably shorter when the probe
in pairs. One word will appear just above the center of the screen, and
occurred in the upper area of the display, where subjects were
one just below. Please read the top word of each pair aloud as soon as
actively reading the words, than when they appeared in the lower
it appears. Sometimes when the two words disappear a small dot will
remain either in the area where the top word appeared or in the area area (577 ms vs. 639 ms). However, this main effect was modified
where the bottom word appeared. When you see the dot, press this by a significant three-way interaction of Groups X Threat Po-
[hand-held] button as quickly as possible. Are there any questions? sition X Probe Position, F(l, 30) = 12.91, p < .001.'
On further detailed analysis, the nature of this significant in-
Subjects were then run through a short practice session before beginning teraction was found to match the predictions outlined earlier.
the main experiment Finally, the anxious subjects were categorized ac- Probe detection latencies from the anxious group alone were
cording to their dominant concern on the basis of their response to the subjected to a repeated measures ANOVA, which considered the
following question: "When you find yourself feeling anxious, are you same three within-groups factors as before. The two-way inter-
most commonly concerned about some physical worry, such as illness
action of Threat Position X Probe Position was significant for
or injury, or about some social worry, such as coping with other people's
this group of subjects, F(\, 15) = 9.58, p< .01, with the pattern
demands and expectations?"
of this interaction being consistent with the experimental hy-
pothesis. Probes in the upper area were detected more rapidly
Analysis when preceded by a threat word in the upper (593 ms) rather
Probe detection latency data for the four critical conditions were sub- than in the lower (652 ms) area; probes in the lower area were
jected to an analysis of variance (ANOVA) that included one fixed between- detected more rapidly when preceded by a threat word in the
lower (663 ms) rather than in the upper (695 ms) area. As pre-
Table 2 dicted, therefore, visual attention appeared to shift toward the
Emotionally Threatening Words Presented threat term.
in the Experimental Task When the control subjects' data were analyzed in the same
way, a strong trend involving the same interaction of Threat Po-
Socially threatening Physically threatening sition X Probe Position was again revealed, F(\, 15) = 3.68, p <
.07. However, the nature of this interaction was precisely the
Criticized Humiliated Injury Agony
Embarrassed Opposed Ambulance Harm
Inadequate Incompetent Emergency Violence
Failure Worthless Disease Collapse
1
Stupid Ridiculed Cancer Disabled Under certain circumstances the interpretation of interactions in-
Pathetic Ignored Fatal Assault volving a between-groups factor may be problematic if the groups each
Foolish Insecure Mutilated Casualty. operate in a different range on the dependent variable scale. In the current
Inferior Despised Coffin Hearse study, the tendency for anxious subjects to show generally larger RTs than
Indecisive Ashamed Deathbed Unwell controls did not approach significance, F(l, 30) =1.13. Furthermore, it
Inept Mocked Paralyzed Fracture will be seen that, because the relevant effects move in opposite directions
Lonely Scorned Hazard Inquest
for patients and controls, scaling considerations pose no interpretative
Hated Disgraced Coronary Corpse
problems with these data (cf. Baron & Treiman, 1980).
18 C. MACLEOD, A. MATHEWS, AND P. TATA
reverse of that shown by the anxious patients. Probes in the upper
area were detected more rapidly when preceded by a threat word
in the lower (524 ms) rather than in the upper (540 ms) area;
probes in the lower area were detected more rapidly when pre-
ceded by a threat word in the upper (584 ms) rather than in the
lower (616 ms) area. Thus, it seems that for the control subjects,
visual attention consistently shifted away from the threat term.
In all of the analyses discussed so far, the interaction of Threat
Position X Probe Position was never subsumed within a higher
order interaction involving threat type. Thus, it appears that
both physical and social threat words exerted an equivalent in-
fluence on the distribution of visual attention. One further ANOVA
was conducted on the anxious subjects' data alone in an attempt
to extend the finding from our previous color-naming study (Ma-
thews & MacLeod, 1985) that extent of processing bias shown
with each type of threat word interacted with the subject's dom-
inant concern. Accordingly, the data gathered from the anxious
subjects in the current study were reanalyzed, with dominant
concern included as a between-groups factor and the same three
within-groups factors as before. However, the anticipated four-
way interaction of Threat Position X Probe Position X Threat
Type X Dominant Concern did not approach significance, F(l,
14) = 0.65. Thus, both types of threat words attracted visual
attention to an equivalent degree in both subgroups of anxious
subjects.
The current study clearly supports the original hypothesis that
high anxiety leads to a bias in selective attention that favors the
pickup of emotionally threatening information. However, it will
be recalled that despite the primary diagnosis of generalized
anxiety, the anxious subjects were also significantly more de-
pressed than the control subjects. It could therefore be argued
that the observed attentional biases could have been mediated
by depression rather than by anxiety level. Unfortunately, this
possibility could not be excluded on the basis of correlational
data. An index reflecting the magnitude of the attentional bias
toward threat words was calculated for each subject by inserting
the appropriate reaction-time data in the following equation:
(upper probe following upper threat — upper probe following
lower threat) + (lower probe following lower threat — lower probe
following upper threat). However, this index did not correlate
significantly with any of the mood measures used in this study.
To directly test the hypothesis that the attentional bias toward
emotionally threatening words may be associated with depression
rather than anxiety, we subsequently recruited a group of 16
subjects with a primary diagnosis of depression and tested them
on the same paradigm. Unfortunately, the mean age of this de-
pressed group (43 years) was slightly older than either of the
previously tested groups. However, as anticipated, the mean BDI
score in this group (28) was very reliably higher than that of
either the anxious subjects, t(14) = 4.73, p < .001, or the non-
anxious controls,!(14) = 7.20, p < .001. Therefore, if the selective
attention bias revealed above is mediated by depression level,
then the depressed patients should shift attention toward the
threat words at least to the same degree as did the anxious pa-
tients. However, when the probe detection latencies from the
depressed patients were subjected to the same repeated measures
ANOVA as previously, the Threat Position X Probe Position in-
teraction did not approach significance, F(l, 15) = 0.64, nor
was there an interaction involving threat type, F(l, 15) = 0.43.
On the basis of these clearly insignificant findings, it is implausible
to argue that the original effect shown by the anxious group was
mediated by these subjects' elevated level of depression.
Discussion
The visual attention paradigm used in this study has two major
advantages over previous techniques for investigating the relation
between mood and the encoding of emotional material. First,
because it requires a neutral response (button pressing) to a neu-
tral stimulus (dot probe), it eliminates the possibility of response
bias interpretations. Second, it allows a test of the prediction that
the presence of a threatening term can both facilitate and impair
dot detection, in the same individual, depending on the threat
word's position relative to the dot. No general explanation in
terms of arousal or performance efficiency can accommodate
such directional effects. By virtue of these advantages, the current
study has clearly demonstrated that anxious subjects do indeed
shift attention toward emotionally threatening stimuli in their
visual environment. Normal control subjects, on the other hand,
tend to shift attention away from such stimuli.
Neisser (1976) has characterized perception as a cyclic process.
The first stage involves the passive intake of partial information
from the environment. This is then mapped onto internal rep-
resentations or schemata, which both accommodate the infor-
mation and direct processing resources during the next intake
cycle toward particular elements of the stimulus array. The func-
tioning of such schemata appears to differ in anxious and non-
anxious subjects, when this array includes elements that are
emotionally threatening. Whereas in the former subjects they
operate in a manner that facilitates the encoding of threatening
stimuli, in the latter they actively inhibit such encoding.
Mildly threatening stimuli are extremely common in the ev-
eryday environment. On the road oncoming vehicles are poten-
tially lethal, in dark streets passcrsby are potential assailants,
and even at home minor somatic sensations are potentially
symptoms of some serious malady. One could reasonably spec-
ulate that the perceptual bias in normal subjects may be protective
in limiting increases in anxiety by excluding such minor threat-
ening stimuli from the cognitive system at a very early stage of
processing. Of course, when confronted by an unequivocal dan-
ger—such as a skidding automobile, a mugger, or an intense
chest pain—one would certainly direct his or her attention ap-
propriately toward this threat. However, our results suggest that
in normal individuals the danger must exceed some threshold
before it commands processing resources in this way, and the
perceptual processing of mild threat cues, such as those used in
this study, is commonly inhibited.
In contrast, anxious subjects show no evidence of such a
threshold. In this study they were shown to direct attention toward
minor threat cues in their environment. Thus, in many situations,
the operation of the cognitive system may differ radically in anx-
ious and nonanxious subjects. The frequent negative affect re-
ported by anxious subjects may result from (or cause) their ex-
cessive processing of the mildly threatening information in that
environment, and the positive affective state of normal subjects
may be similarly related to the inhibition of such processing.
 ATTENTIONAL BIAS IN EMOTIONAL
It has been shown that the degree to which anxious subjects
shifted visual attention toward the threatening stimuli was
equivalent for both physical and social threat, regardless of the
subject's dominant concern. This stands in contrast to the results
of a previous color-naming interference study (Mathews &
MacLeod, 1985), which did show an interaction between dom-
inant concern and threat type. Possibly, therefore, these two par-
adigms reveal biases that operate at separate stages of processing.
At the earlier stage, during encoding, the anxious subjects show
a general bias that favors the intake of any emotionally threat-
ening material. However, the subsequent processing of this
threatening information may be more extensive and/or prolonged
if it relates to areas of particular concern to the individual. Thus,
the greater selectivity of the bias shown with the color-naming
task could reflect the fact that this task takes longer and may
involve more processing stages. This suggests that future research
on the relation between mood and cognition should more care-
fully delineate the particular stages of processing under consid-
eration, because the findings will probably not be equivalent
throughout the processing continuum.
The current results are firmly in keeping with our previous
suggestion that anxious patients show evidence of overactive
danger schemata—cognitive structures that facilitate the pro-
cessing of danger-related information (Mathews & MacLeod,
1985, in press). Although anxiety level has been previously im-
plicated as the mediating factor regulating the activity of such
danger schemata, the relative roles of state and trait anxiety have
not been unequivocally distinguished in the present study. The
anxious subjects were significantly higher than controls on both
measures. Thus, we may be observing relatively stable individual
differences in those cognitive processing structures that direct
resources toward the uptake of threat-related information. Al-
ternatively, such differences may be less stable and mediated pri-
marily by current affective state. Elsewhere (Mathews &
MacLeod, 1985), we have suggested that both possibilities may
be partially true. Specifically, we have argued that high trait anx-
iety levels may reflect the nature and extent of such danger sche-
mata, whereas state anxiety may determine their level of activity.
Thus, high trait anxiety individuals will not always demonstrate
biased perceptual processing but will be vulnerable to such biases
as their state anxiety increases, perhaps leading to the prolonged
maintenance of state anxiety in those subjects. In low trait anxiety
individuals, who are not characterized by well-delineated danger
schemata, elevated state anxiety will not lead to such perceptual
biases and will thus subside rapidly when the original stressor is
removed. We are currently engaged in further studies that use
the current paradigm in an attempt to test this hypothesis.
Although it may not have distinguished between the roles of
trait and state anxiety, the current study appears to have elimi-
nated depression as the mediating factor that determines whether
attention shifts toward, or away from, emotionally threatening
stimuli. According to Bower's (1981) network model, the mech-
anism whereby mood influences cognition is equivalent for all
forms of affect. Thus, if visual attention is shifted toward mood-
congruent material in anxiety, it should also be shifted toward
mood-congruent material in depression. To sustain Bower's
model in the light of our current findings, one would need to
argue that the words used in this study are anxiety congruent
DISORDERS 19
but not depression congruent. This may be tenable for the phys-
ical threat words, but it is rather more difficult to accept for the
social threat words (see Table 2), many of which have actually
been used in previous studies demonstrating memory biases in
depressed subjects. Yet the depressed patients showed no evi-
dence, in this current paradigm, that attention was shifted toward
either type of emotionally threatening word.
An alternative hypothesis that could be considered at this point
is that depression and anxiety may interact with cognitive pro-
cessing in fundamentally different ways. There is now consid-
erable evidence of recall biases in depressed subjects (Bradley &
Mathews, 1983; Clark & Teasdale, 1982;Derry&Kuiper, 1981;
Fogarty & Hemsley, 1983; Frith et al., 1983; Mathews & Bradley,
1983; Teasdale & Fogarty, 1979; Teasdale & Taylor, 1981; Teas-
dale et al., 1980). However, there is a striking absence of such
findings for anxious subjects. Recent research by Karin Mogg
in our own laboratory has consistently failed to demonstrate any
such relation between anxiety and recall. For example, Mogg
examined incidental recall of trait adjectives, which could either
be anxiety relevant (e.g., nervous, timid) or not (e.g., relaxed,
confident). Although this paradigm was identical to that used in
previous studies on depression (Bradley & Mathews, 1983; Derry
& Kuiper, 1981; Mathews & Bradley, 1983), Mogg found clini-
cally anxious subjects to show no enhanced recall of self-rated
anxiety-relevant adjectives. In fact, the anxious patients showed
the same recall pattern as the nonanxious control subjects. Sim-
ilarly, in a study that investigated recall of newspaper photo-
graphs, Mogg's anxious subjects showed no enhanced recall for
pictures that had previously been rated as highly threatening
(e.g., automobile accidents, blazing buildings, etc.). Once again,
the anxious and control subjects demonstrated equivalent recall
patterns.
Nevertheless, a considerable number of studies have suggested
that biases favoring the encoding of mood-congruent material
do operate in anxiety (Burgess et al., 1981; Mathews & MacLeod,
1985, in press; Parkinson & Rachman, 1981; Ray, 1979; Watts
et al., in press). The current study eliminates some alternative
explanations for these earlier studies (presented in the introduc-
tion) and clearly confirms the existence of an attentional bias in
anxious patients. In the case of depression, however, there is little
current evidence to suggest an attentional bias favoring the en-
coding of depression-related material. The current failure to find
such effects has already been discussed. Previous research has
also shown that induced depression does not reduce lexical de-
cision latencies for negatively toned words relative to neutral
words (Clark, Teasdale, Broadbent, & Martin, 1983), nor does
it lower their perceptual threshold (Gerrig & Bower, 1982). It
has also been demonstrated that induced depression does not
differentially impair color-naming latency for such words (Clark,
1984; Gotlib & McCann, 1984). The only positive finding in this
area is that students who score highly on the BDI show increased
color-naming latency for words with a negative hedonic tone in
relation to those who score low on this questionnaire (Gotlib &
McCann, 1984). However, these researchers failed to assess anx-
iety level in the students, and because scores on the BDI correlate
highly with most anxiety questionnaires, these results could con-
ceivably be accounted for by anxiety differences between the two
groups of students. In our own color-naming study, although the
20 C. MACLEOD, A. MATHEWS, AND P. TATA
magnitude of color-naming interference on the negatively toned
words did in fact correlate with BDI score, this correlation dis-
appeared when the influence of anxiety level was partialed out.
Using partial correlations, only state anxiety remained signifi-
cantly related to the extent of interference on such words.
The simplest way to accommodate the evidence is, therefore,
to suggest that anxiety is characterized by attentional biases op-
erating at a perceptual level to facilitate the pickup of mood-
congruent, emotionally threatening information, whereas
depression is characterized by biases operating at the retrieval
stage that facilitate the recall of mood-congruent, emotionally
negative information. Such a distinction between the cognitive
processes that may underlie these two different types of aversive
emotions could illuminate various clinical distinctions between
the two disorders. Typically, depressed individuals attribute their
negative affect to internal sources, whereas anxious individuals
more often attribute it to external sources, sometimes leading
to avoidance of certain kinds of situations.
This would, of course, be the pattern expected if the hypothesis
is valid. Similarly, Beck (1976) has suggested that depression is
associated with negative thoughts that are often concerned with
the past, whereas anxiety is more characterized by thoughts as-
sociated with future threat. Again this may be anticipated if in-
deed the cognitive bias in depression and anxiety primarily in-
fluences retrieval and encoding, respectively. Of course, the ac-
ceptance, rejection, or modification of this hypothesis must await
the results of research directed specifically at this issue.
As with most research, this study has raised questions as well
as answered them. Important future goals for researchers in this
field must be to establish the precise influence of a range of
different moods at each stage of the processing continuum, to
delineate the classes of emotional material influenced by each
type of mood, to separate the influence of stable individual dif-
ferences from transient mood effects, and to determine the di-
rection of causality inherent in the relation between each mood
and the observed biases in information processing. Precise ex-
perimental techniques, adapted from contemporary information
processing paradigms, are likely to play an increasingly important
role in this area.
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Received April 22, 1985
Revision received September 23, 1985 •