A cognitive psychology experiment measuring attentional bias toward emotional stimuli
Welcome to the Dot Probe Task. This task measures how your attention is affected by emotional words.
The Dot Probe Task is a widely used cognitive psychology experiment designed to measure attentional bias toward emotional stimuli. Developed by MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata in 1986, this task helps researchers understand how individuals allocate their attention when presented with both neutral and emotionally charged information.
In this task, you will see a fixation cross in the center of the screen, followed by two words appearing simultaneously - one at the top and one at the bottom position. One word will be emotionally neutral, while the other will be emotionally charged (related to anxiety). After a brief display, both words will disappear, and a probe (*) will appear in the location of one of the words. Your task is to respond as quickly as possible by pressing: - Press 'A' if the probe appears at the top position - Press 'L' if the probe appears at the bottom position The experiment measures your reaction time to detect probes that replace either neutral or emotionally charged words.
The Dot Probe Task measures attentional bias by comparing reaction times to probes that replace emotional versus neutral stimuli. Faster responses to probes replacing emotional words suggest that attention was already directed toward that location, indicating an attentional bias toward emotional content. This task is particularly useful in studying anxiety, depression, and other conditions where attentional biases may play a role in maintaining symptoms.