action changes valence-based action coding in an implicit

Implicit self-esteem in borderline personality and

8 Abstract Cognitive models of paranoia posit the exis-9 tence of specific information-processing biases, such as 10 attentional biases, that are related to persecutory beliefs. 11 The nature of these biases remains unclear. Some models 12 propose depression to be at the core of paranoid ideation, 13 while other models propose anxiety. In this study we tested 14 whether attentional biases towards angry or neutral faces 15 were facilitated by 300-ms presentation of an emotional 16 prime word (positive, depressive, paranoid, neutral) in 17 normal participants high in paranoid beliefs (HPB, 18 N = 52) or low in paranoid beliefs (LPB, N = 43). 19 Analyses of first fixation patterns in visual scanpaths 20 revealed that paranoid words made all participants avoid 21 angry faces, though this tendency reached significance only 22 in the LPB group. In contrast, depressive words triggered 23 significant avoidance of angry faces in the HPB group. 24 These findings suggest that activation of depressive cog-25 nitive schemas facilitates attentional biases specifically in 26 participants with subclinical paranoia, which would favor 27 the depression-based model of paranoia. We discuss the 28 importance of priming methodologies and visual scan 29 measures for revealing specific cognitive processes in 30 psychopathology and testing competing etiological models 31 of paranoia.

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