Assessing attention allocation toward threat-related stimuli: a comparison of the emotional Stroop task and the attentional probe task

This study examined the association of two widely used measures of attention allocation toward or away from threat-related stimuli: The emotional Stroop task and the attentional probe task. Fifty-three participants responded to computer versions of both tasks where stimuli were presented both subliminally and supraliminally. Thus, four indexes indicating attention allocation were computed for each participant. A correlation analysis showed that the attentional probe index and the emotional Stroop index were associated within each presentation mode while all other relations were nonsignificant. These results are discussed in terms of a distinction between preattentive and attentional processes operationalised by different stimulus presentation times.