Abstract Mobile phone addiction is a behavioral addiction that leads to physical and psychological maladaptation. Researchers have focused on the attentional bias of cognitive cues while neglecting the role of emotional information. The main debate concerning emotional information has been on whether its associated attentional bias is caused by different types of emotional information or only by negative emotional information. We investigated the specific information processing mechanism that lies behind mobile phone addicts’ attentional bias towards emotional information. In this study, behavioral experiments were performed using the dot-probe paradigm. The results showed that high-level mobile phone addicts (MPAs) have attentional bias towards negative emotional information. In order to understand the mechanism of attentional bias more precisely, a follow up study was carried out using eye movement techniques. The results of this follow up study found that, compared with the normal use group, high-level MPAs’ eyes tended to fixate first on negative faces, and significantly more on negative faces than on positive faces. When high-level MPAs demonstrated attentional bias towards negative faces, their first fixation duration was significantly longer than those for positive faces. However, there was no overall attention maintenance of negative emotional information. We conclude that mobile phone addicts have attentional bias towards negative emotional information, manifested as an alert-maintenance model, meaning that attention orientation and difficult disengagement function together. The results of this study could be used to guide interventions geared towards attentional bias training for mobile phone addicts, as well as providing theoretical support for treatment and intervention.

中文翻译：

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手机成瘾者对情绪信息的注意偏向及信​​息加工机制研究

摘要 手机成瘾是一种导致身心适应不良的行为成瘾。研究人员专注于认知线索的注意力偏差，而忽略了情感信息的作用。关于情绪信息的主要争论一直是其相关的注意力偏差是由不同类型的情绪信息引起的，还是仅由负面情绪信息引起的。我们调查了手机成瘾者对情绪信息的注意偏向背后的特定信息处理机制。在这项研究中，行为实验是使用点探针范例进行的。结果表明，高级手机成瘾者（MPA）对负面情绪信息有注意偏向。为了更准确地理解注意力偏差的机制，使用眼球运动技术进行了后续研究。本次后续研究的结果发现，与正常使用组相比，高级MPA的眼睛倾向于首先注视负面面孔，并且对负面面孔的关注明显多于正面面孔。当高级 MPA 表现出对负面面孔的注意力偏见时，他们的第一次注视时间明显长于正面面孔。然而，没有对负面情绪信息的整体注意力维持。我们得出结论，手机成瘾者对负面情绪信息有注意力偏见，表现为一种警觉维持模型，这意味着注意力导向和难以脱离的共同作用。