Emotion-congruent attentional biases: the perspective of hierarchical models of emotional disorders

Using the rationale of current hierarchical models of anxiety and depression, this study examined relationships between common and specific factors of these syndromes and emotion-congruent attentional biases. Participants (n = 72) performed an emotional Stroop task, in which anxiety- and depression-related as well as neutral non-valenced words were presented both supra- and subliminally. The anxiety-related general distress scale, but not specific anxiety scales, correlated significantly with the anxiety-related subliminal bias. A partial correlational analysis showed that this relationship was independent of scores on depression-related scales. In agreement with most previous findings, no depression-related attentional biases were found. As expected for sub-clinical populations none of the scales was associated with any supraliminal attentional bias.