Compare methods

	Dot-Probe Task	Evaluative Priming	Sequential Priming
Field	Social Psychology	Social Psychology	Social Psychology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1986	1986	1986
Originator	Colin MacLeod, Andrew Mathews & Philip Tata	Russell H. Fazio and colleagues	Social cognition priming tradition (Fazio and colleagues)
Type	Reaction-time attentional bias paradigm	Reaction-time implicit attitude paradigm	General reaction-time priming framework
Seminal source	MacLeod, C., Mathews, A., & Tata, P. (1986). Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(1), 15-20.	Fazio, R. H., Sanbonmatsu, D. M., Powell, M. C., & Kardes, F. R. (1986). On the automatic activation of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(2), 229-238.	Fazio, R. H., Sanbonmatsu, D. M., Powell, M. C., & Kardes, F. R. (1986). On the automatic activation of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(2), 229-238.
Aliases	Visual Probe Task, Attentional Bias Task, MacLeod Probe Task	Automatic Evaluation Task, Fazio Priming Task, Bona Fide Pipeline	Prime-Target Priming, Semantic-Affective Priming, Response-Window Priming
Related	3	3	3
Summary	The dot-probe task, introduced by MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata in 1986, measures selective attention to emotional information. On each trial two stimuli -- typically one threatening and one neutral word or image -- appear simultaneously in different screen locations; they then disappear and a probe (a dot or small symbol) appears in the location previously occupied by one of them. Participants respond to the probe as fast as possible. If attention was already drawn to the threatening stimulus, probes appearing in its location are detected faster, yielding an attentional-bias score from the difference in reaction times. The task gave attentional bias an objective, behavioral operationalization and became the dominant paradigm in anxiety and emotion research, as well as a target for attention-bias-modification interventions.	Evaluative priming, introduced by Fazio and colleagues in 1986, is the foundational reaction-time paradigm for measuring automatic attitudes. On each trial an attitude object (the prime) is briefly presented and is quickly followed by a clearly positive or negative target word that the participant categorizes as 'good' or 'bad' as fast as possible. When the prime and target share the same valence -- a liked object followed by a positive word -- responses are faster; when they mismatch, responses slow. This congruency effect reveals that merely seeing an attitude object automatically activates its associated evaluation, which then facilitates or interferes with judging the target. Because the attitude is inferred from response speed rather than self-report, evaluative priming gives a window onto spontaneous evaluations and became, in its 'bona fide pipeline' form, an early standard for measuring implicit attitudes including racial prejudice.	Sequential priming is the general experimental framework underlying many implicit social-cognition measures: a prime is presented, followed after some interval by a target to which the participant responds, and the speed of responding reveals what the prime automatically activated. By varying the prime-target relation (semantic, affective, stereotypic, goal-related) and the stimulus onset asynchrony, researchers can map which associations are activated, how quickly, and whether the activation is automatic or strategic. Short intervals isolate automatic spreading activation that participants cannot control, while longer intervals permit controlled processes. Evaluative priming, affective priming, and stereotype priming are all special cases of this logic, making sequential priming a unifying methodological backbone for studying automatic mental processes in social psychology.