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Don't Fear The Reaper? The Effects of Stress on Visual Attention and Threat-Processing

Jervelycke, Attila LU (2017) PSYK11 20171
Department of Psychology
Abstract
In the current study, the aim was to investigate whether attentional bias—an automatic and nonconscious pre-attentive process of filtering sensory information for emotional relevance—could be induced in normal students, by manipulating levels of stress. In a within-subject experimental design where each participant completed 3 word search puzzles, it was predicted that the ratio at which participants found negative words to neutral words would positively correlate with the level of induced stress, ranging from low-medium-high. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant results. This may be due to faulty experimental design, as commentaries made by participants revealed that many of them experienced the situation as... (More)
In the current study, the aim was to investigate whether attentional bias—an automatic and nonconscious pre-attentive process of filtering sensory information for emotional relevance—could be induced in normal students, by manipulating levels of stress. In a within-subject experimental design where each participant completed 3 word search puzzles, it was predicted that the ratio at which participants found negative words to neutral words would positively correlate with the level of induced stress, ranging from low-medium-high. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant results. This may be due to faulty experimental design, as commentaries made by participants revealed that many of them experienced the situation as stressful, and that negative words did seem to “pop out” or “be everywhere.” This may suggest that attentional bias was indeed induced, even though instruments used were not able to adequately measure it. Results are discussed, and improvements for studies using word search puzzles to study attention are suggested. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Jervelycke, Attila LU
supervisor
organization
alternative title
Does induced stress cause attentional bias towards negative words?
course
PSYK11 20171
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
stress, threat detection, vigilance, attention, bias
language
English
id
8922114
date added to LUP
2017-08-28 13:19:00
date last changed
2017-08-28 13:19:00
@misc{8922114,
  abstract     = {{In the current study, the aim was to investigate whether attentional bias—an automatic and nonconscious pre-attentive process of filtering sensory information for emotional relevance—could be induced in normal students, by manipulating levels of stress. In a within-subject experimental design where each participant completed 3 word search puzzles, it was predicted that the ratio at which participants found negative words to neutral words would positively correlate with the level of induced stress, ranging from low-medium-high. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant results. This may be due to faulty experimental design, as commentaries made by participants revealed that many of them experienced the situation as stressful, and that negative words did seem to “pop out” or “be everywhere.” This may suggest that attentional bias was indeed induced, even though instruments used were not able to adequately measure it. Results are discussed, and improvements for studies using word search puzzles to study attention are suggested.}},
  author       = {{Jervelycke, Attila}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Don't Fear The Reaper? The Effects of Stress on Visual Attention and Threat-Processing}},
  year         = {{2017}},
}