Abstract: Objective To understand the characteristics and cognitive mechanism of depressive college students' attention bias towards emotional faces in the presence or absence of anxiety symptoms. Methods A total of 78 undergraduate students who were enrolled from January to April in 2022 were divided into low anxiety-low depression group,low anxiety-high depression group and high anxiety-high depression group according to whether the depression and anxiety factors of symptom check list 90（SCL-90） were positive（factor score≥2）. The face pictures in the Chinese face emotional system were selected and paired into positive-neutral,negative-neutral and neutral-neutral picture pairs as stimulus materials.The point detection paradigm was used to compare the response time differences of each group students to the emotional face images. Results The average reaction time of all subjects when the positions of detection points were inconsistent with the emotional pictures was longer than that under the consistent condition（443.96 vs 437.48 ms）（P<0.05）. The bias index（BI）（21.39±35.06） in the high anxiety-high depression group was more than 0（t=3.11,P<0.01）,the orienting index（OI） was not significantly different from 0（P>0.05）,and the disengaging index（DI）（15.08±26.87） was more than 0（t=2.86,P<0.01）. The BI,OI and DI of positive and negative face images in the low anxiety-low depression group and the low anxiety-high depression group were not significantly different from 0（all P>0.05）. Conclusions Depressed college students with anxiety symptoms have attention bias to negative stimulation,which is manifested as difficulty in attentional relief rather than attentional directed acceleration. The depressed college students without anxiety symptom have not attentional bias to negative stimulation. There was no attentional bias to emotional facial stimulation among college students without anxiety and depression symptoms.

Key words: Depression, Anxiety, Attention bias, Emotional face, College students