1 Introduction LeDoux, 1996; Davis and Whalen, 2001 Whalen et al., 1998 Davis and Whalen, 2001 Beck and Emery, 1985; Williams et al., 1997; Mogg and Bradley, 1998 Beck and Emery's (1985) Ballenger, 1999 Mogg and Bradley, 1998 Whalen et al., 2001; Blair et al., 1999; Davis and Whalen, 2001 Yang et al., 2002 Davis and Whalen (2001) Adams et al., 2003 Davis and Whalen's (2001) Öhman et al., 2001; Fox et al., 2000 Bradley et al., 1998, 1999; Mogg et al., 2004 Wilson and MacLeod, 2003 Bradley et al., 2000; Mogg et al., 2000 Williams et al., 2005 Holmes et al., 2005 Blair et al., 1999; Wilson and MacLeod, 2003 Davis and Whalen, 2001 Mogg and Bradley, 1998 2 Method 2.1 Participants Spielberger, 1983 2.2 Materials and apparatus The task was administered using MEL2 software (Schneider, 1995), Pentium 450 MHz PC, 15 in. VGA monitor and MEL2 response box. Eye-movements were monitored with 120 Hz infrared pan/tilt eye tracking system (Model 504, Applied Scientific Laboratories, Bedford, Massachusetts) and E5000 software (Applied Science Group, 2000) which was run on a Pentium 333 MHz PC. Testing was conducted in a dimly lit room. 2.3 Procedure Participants completed a visual acuity check and were seated 1 m from the monitor, with the eye tracking camera positioned 50 cm in front of them, below the right eye. The equipment was calibrated by displaying the numbers 1 to 9 on the screen in a 3 × 3 array and recording the direction of gaze whilst participants looked at each number in turn. Each trial of the attentional task started with a central fixation-cross shown for 1000 ms, followed by a pair of pictures presented side by side for 500 ms. The pictures measured 90 mm × 110 mm, with their inner edges 45 mm apart. Immediately after the offset of the picture-pair, a probe (pair of dots : or ..) was presented in the position of one of the preceding pictures (visual angle of 7.7° between two probe positions) until a manual response. Participants were asked to press one of two keys as quickly as possible to indicate the type of probe. Inter-trial interval varied randomly between 750 and 1250 ms. Participants were instructed to keep their head still throughout the task and to look at the fixation-cross at the start of each trial. Eye-movement data were recorded from the onset of the fixation-cross until the manual response. There were eight practice trials followed by two blocks, each consisting of two buffer trials and 256 experimental trials, with a short rest-break between the blocks. Across the whole task, the 64 face pairs were presented eight times, balanced for emotional face location and probe location (left vs. right). Trials were presented in a new random order for each participant. If eye calibration quality deteriorated during the task, the task was briefly interrupted to repeat the calibration procedure. Strahan and Gerbasi, 1972 Eysenck, 1997 2.4 Data preparation 2.4.1 Eye-movement data F F p 2.4.2 RT data t Ratcliff, 1993 Bradley et al., 1998 6 Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests showed that the distributions of RT bias scores and gaze-direction scores were within normal limits. 3 Results 3.1 Group characteristics Table 1 3.2 Eye-movement data Fig. 2 F p η p 2 = .09 F p η p 2 = .18 F p η p 2 = .06 F F p η p 2 = .32 F p η p 2 = .07 M t d t d t d t t d t p d t p d t p d t t p d t p d 3.3 Manual RT data F p η p 2 = .06 F t d t d t d t d t p d t p d t p d t p d t d 3.4 Rating tasks 3.4.1 Forced choice discrimination task 3.4.2 Anger ratings anger continuum F p η p 2 = .93 F p fear continuum F p η p 2 = .20 F p 3.4.3 Fear ratings fear continuum F p η p 2 = .92 F F p anger continuum F p η p 2 = .06 F 4 Discussion The present findings indicate that fearful and angry faces elicited similar biases in visuospatial orienting. There was a greater tendency for participants to direct gaze initially towards faces with moderate or intense threat-related facial expressions (50–100% intensity), relative to neutral faces, whereas mild threat-related facial expressions (25% intensity) did not elicit a bias in initial orienting. Moreover, visuospatial orienting to both fearful and angry faces was significantly influenced by individual differences in anxiety: high-anxious individuals showed a greater tendency to direct gaze at prototypical (100%) threat-related faces, irrespective of whether the faces depicted fear or anger. The secondary measure of attentional bias, which was obtained from manual RTs, showed a similar pattern of results to that obtained in the eye-movement data. Mogg and Bradley, 1998; Mogg et al., 2000 Mogg et al., 2000 Wilson and MacLeod, 2003 Monk et al., 2006