Abstract: Individual anxiety influences attentional biases toward emotional information, particularly patterns of early attention and later avoidance. However, how these biases unfold across parafoveal and foveal vision during natural reading remains unclear. By using eye tracking, we employed a 2(anxiety level: high vs. low)×3(emotional word type: positive, neutral, negative) mixed design to examine how anxiety modulates attention to emotional words in parafoveal and foveal visions. Results revealed two main findings. First, in the pre-target word region, parafoveal positive words elicited longer first fixation durations and gaze durations than neutral words. In the target word region, there were shorter total fixation durations and lookback fixation times for foveal positive words than for both negative and neutral words. These findings indicate an attentional bias toward positive words during reading. Second, a significant interaction between anxiety level and emotional word type emerged in the pre-target region. Follow-up comparisons showed that high anxiety readers had longer go past times for negative than for neutral words, whereas no corresponding effect was observed among low anxiety readers. This pattern suggests an attentional bias toward parafoveal negative information in high anxiety readers and provides some support for the vigilance-avoidance hypothesis.

Key words: Chinese reading, emotional words, attentional bias, anxiety

摘要： 焦虑水平影响个体对情绪信息的注意偏向，尤其在早期捕获与晚期回避方面存在特定模式，但该过程在自然阅读中随空间视野区的动态变化仍缺乏考察。本研究通过2(焦虑水平：高、低)×3(情绪词类型：积极、中性、消极)混合设计，采用眼动追踪技术考察个体焦虑水平如何影响副中央凹与中央凹视野区情绪词的注意偏向。结果显示：(1)在目标前词区，副中央凹积极词比中性词有更长的首次和凝视时间；在目标词区，中央凹积极词分别比消极词和中性词有更短的总注视和回看注视时间。结果表明阅读中读者对积极词存在注意偏向。(2)在目标前词区，焦虑水平与情绪词类型的交互作用主要表现为相对于低焦虑个体，高焦虑个体对消极词比中性词有更长的回视路径时间，表明高焦虑个体对副中央凹消极词有更多注意偏向，在一定程度上支持警觉−回避假说。

关键词: 中文阅读, 情绪词, 注意偏向, 焦虑