Information Overload 145
including interoceptive awareness (see chapter 2), to guard
against threat. This notion has been well studied using
simple computer- measured tasks, such as the dot- probe par-
adigm. During the dot- probe task, individuals are simulta-
neously shown (on a computer screen) a pair of words, one
neutral (such as “bicycle”) and one threatening (such as
“cancer”). The words are displayed for only a very short
time, less than a thousandth of a second. After the words dis-
appear, a dot appears where one of the words was, and the
participants’ task is to locate the dot as quickly as possible.
Anxious participants are typically quicker to locate the dot
when it appears where the threatening word was compared
with where the neutral word was, indicating that they are
more vigilant against threatening words. Participants
without anxiety, however, don’t share this tendency.
Examination of such studies reveals that not only is atten-
tion bias related to anxiety, attention bias may increase the
likelihood that people will develop problematic or disor-
dered anxiety.
Interpretation bias refers to anxious people’s tendency
not only to focus on negative events and emotions but also
to interpret ambiguous stimuli in a negative or calamitous
manner. Memory may play an important role in interpreta-
tion bias, such that anxious individuals tend to more fre-
quently recall negative events while dismissing or forgetting
positive events. For example, if you have a fear of dogs and
you encounter an off- leash dog while walking in a park, you
may be more prone to remember all of your past negative
(scary) encounters with dogs than to remember your past
positive encounters. Similar to research on attention biases,
research on interpretation biases reveals a strong connec-
tion to problematic anxiety.