Attentional Bias among Individuals with Low Self-Esteem:an Event-Related Potential Study

Research has revealed that attentional biases are comprised of rapidly attentional orienting towards threat,difficulty in disengaging attention from threat.However,the neural basis of the component of attentioanl bias is still uncertain.In present study,a spatial cueing task was used to measure attentional biases because this task can differentiate rapidly attentional orienting and difficulty in disengagement.Event related potentials for targets were recorded when participants performed the spatial cueing task.Behavioral data showed that reaction time was longer under invalid condition than valid condition.ERP data revealed that LSE individuals showed more enhanced P1 and smaller N1 amplitude when the face cue was angryrelative to neutraland happyon invalid trials.More increased P290-370 amplitude under invalid condition than valid condition.No other significant main or interaction effects were found.These findings suggested that attentional bias in LSE individuals reflect a difficulty in disengaging from threaten stimuli,rather than a rapidly attentional orienting for threaten stimuli.