“In an initial unpublished experiment by a student of Michael Eysenck (C. In 1990, he comments on the same paradigm as follows: The use of the verb 'motivated' in this acknowledgement is ambiguous but Professor Mathews has subsequently clarified it further.
Halkiopoulos, whose unpublished doctoral research at Birkbeck College, London, motivated the development of the current paradigm.” (MacLeod, Mathews and Tata, 1986, p.15). halkiopoulos's initial research is described by Eysenck, MacLeod and Mathews (1987) and, in some more technical detail, by Eysenck (1991).Ī footnote of the original 1986 paper reads as follows: This method was subsequently used in the visual modality by MacLeod, Mathews and Tata (1986) in what came to be known as the dot probe paradigm.
Halkiopoulos demonstrated attentional biases by measuring reaction times to auditory probes following neutral and emotional words in the attended and the unattended channels.
He introduced an attentional probe paradigm, which he initially used in the auditory modality to assess attentional biases to threatening auditory information, when threatening and non-threatening information was presented simultaneously to both ears in a dichotic listening task ( ). Halkiopoulos, later a doctoral student of Eysenck, carried out this research while he was a psychology undergraduate at UCL, under the supervision of professor N.F. The dot-probe paradigm is a test used by cognitive psychologists to assess selective attention.Īccording to Eysenck, MacLeod & Mathews (1987) and Mathews (2004) the dot-probe task derives directly from research carried out by Christos Halkiopoulos in 1981 (see below the section on Who Invented the Dot Probe Paradigm).