“…As in prior work (MacNamara & Hajcak, 2009, 2010), we expected that LPPs would be greater for aversive stimuli than for neutral stimuli when presented in attended locations, but not when stimuli were presented in unattended locations. Given prior work demonstrating that greater LPPs to aversive stimuli are associated with anxiety (MacNamara & Hajcak, 2009, 2010), and fMRI results suggesting that greater attention to aversive stimuli is associated with improved CBT outcomes (Doehrmann et al, 2013; Klumpp et al, 2013; Fu et al, 2008; Whalen et al, 2008; Kujawa et al, 2016; Canli et al, 2005; Siegle et al, 2006; MacNamara & Hajcak, 2010), we hypothesized that individuals with larger LPPs to aversive stimuli would be more likely to respond to CBT, and would show larger decreases in symptoms of anxiety and depression, relative to individuals with smaller LPPs to aversive stimuli. Given that prior work demonstrated associations between anxiety and attention to aversive targets (MacNamara & Hajcak, 2009, 2010), we expected that greater attention to aversive targets would predict better treatment outcome; we did not have a priori hypotheses about whether treatment outcome would be associated with LPPs to aversive distracters.…”