What is Attentional Bias?

The research we are doing aims to measure the attentional bias towards threat among those with psoriasis and healthy control participants, in order to establish whether people with psoriasis display attentional biases when presented with threatening information.

What is Attentional Bias?

Attentional bias is the unconscious allocation of attention either towards or away from a threat. If attention is directed towards the threat, this is referred to as hypervigilance, whereas if attention is  directed away from the threat, this is referred to as avoidance. 

An example of when there is likely to be an attentional bias is among those with a phobia. If a person with a spider phobia walked into a room with a spider in it, they are likely to display some form of attentional bias regarding the spider than a person without a spider phobia.

Types of Attentional Bias

As mentioned before, there are different types of attentional bias:

Hypervigilance: The unconscious allocation of attention towards a threat.

Avoidance: The unconscious allocation of attention away from a threat.

There are also different types of attentional bias within both of these categories. These different types of attentional bias differ in their direction (i.e. either towards or away) but also in their timing. Attentional bias is a form of information processing, and information processing has different stages. Attentional bias can occur in the early stages of information processing, but also the later stages.

So, both hypervigilance and avoidance can happen in the early or late stages. The existing research on attentional bias has given each type a name:

Enhanced Attentional Capture: This is hypervigilance in the early stages of information processing. This means that your attention is grabbed by the threat very quickly.

Difficulty to Disengage: This is hypervigilance in the later stages of information processing. This means that once your attention has been allocated towards the threat, it is difficult to redirect it elsewhere.

Slower/Reluctant Attentional Capture: This is avoidance in the early stages of information processing. This means that attention is unconsciously reluctant to engage with the threat, and so attention remains elsewhere in the very early stages.

Facilitated Disengagement: This is avoidance in the later stages of information processing. This means that attention is diverted away from the threat quickly after it has been processed more consciously.

So, when measuring attentional bias there are lots of answers we could be given!