Dot-Probe Task

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.