Hypothesis
Carryover from trial to trial — larger congruency effects after a congruent trial than after an incongruent one — would explain why threat congruency effects in the dot-probe task are small and unreliable.
What failed
In two large samples (n = 241 and n = 82) there was a small congruency effect for fearful faces (d = 0.15) and a reverse effect for threatening images (d = 0.11), but no carryover effects of threat in either experiment; Bayesian analyses gave moderate to strong support for the null.
Broken assumption
Trial-to-trial carryover explains the weak and unreliable threat congruency effects in the dot-probe task.
Why
The authors conclude carryover does not influence attentional bias to threat, so it does not account for the small effects and poor reliability reported for the task.
From the published paper: Maxwell et al. Journal of Trial and Error, 2022. ↗CC BY