Objective   To investigate whether individuals with a high depression rating retain attentional bias towards negative emotional pictures when such pictures are repeatedly presented.     Methods   Subjects being rated high (n=20) and low (n=20) on Beck depression inventory (BDI) and self-rating depression scale (SDS)

and 20 normal subjects participated in a forced-choice reaction time version of a modified dot-probe task. Picture pairs (negative and neutral emotional pictures) were presented in 4 exposure blocks. On each exposure

the attentional bias to the pictures pairs was measured.     Results   (1) No significant difference was found in the accuracy among the 3 groups; (2) The subjects with high depressive scores had significantly shorter average reaction time (RT) in the fourth exposure than in the first exposure (P0.01)

while no significant difference was found between groups and exposures (P0.05); (3) Compared with the normal controls

subjects with high depressive scores showed more selective attention to the negative emotional pictures and had significant main effect (P0.05). The exposures of the emotional faces also showed main effect (P0.05). Obvious interactions were found among the picture types

exposures

and groups (P0.05).     Conclusion   Subjects with high depressive scores show attentional bias to the first exposure of negative emotional faces. However

on the fourth block

the attentional bias to negative emotional pictures disappears.