The time course of attentional disengagement from angry faces in social anxiety

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine group and individual differences in attentional bias toward and away from socially threatening facial stimuli among adolescents who stutter and age- and sex-matched typically fluent controls. Method Participants included 86 adolescents (43 stuttering, 43 controls) ranging in age from 13 to 19 years. They completed a computerized dot-probe task, which was modified to allow for separate measurement of attentional engagement with and attentional disengagement from facial stimuli (angry, fearful, neutral expressions). Their response time on this task was the dependent variable. Participants also completed the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) and provided a speech sample for analysis of stuttering-like behaviors. Results The adolescents who stutter were more likely to engage quickly with threatening faces than to maintain attention on neutral faces, and they were also more likely to disengage quickly from threatening faces than to maintain attention on those faces. The typically fluent controls did not show any attentional preference for the threatening faces over the neutral faces in either the engagement or disengagement conditions. The two groups demonstrated equivalent levels of social anxiety that were both, on average, very close to the clinical cutoff score for high social anxiety, although degree of social anxiety did not influence performance in either condition. Stuttering severity did not influence performance among the adolescents who stutter. Conclusion This study provides preliminary evidence for a vigilance–avoidance pattern of attentional allocation to threatening social stimuli among adolescents who stutter.

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Faculty Opinions recommendation of Altered time course of amygdala activation during speech anticipation in social anxiety disorder.

Faculty Opinions – Post-Publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature ◽

10.3410/f.727005164.793528007 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Michiel Westenberg ◽

Janna Marie Bas-Hoogendam

Keyword(s):

Anxiety Disorder ◽

Social Anxiety ◽

Social Anxiety Disorder ◽

Time Course ◽

Amygdala Activation

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Attentional disengagement biases of affective in Social Anxiety

The Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the Japanese Psychological Association ◽

10.4992/pacjpa.83.0_3a-032 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 83 (0) ◽

pp. 3A-032-3A-032

Author(s):

Tsuyoshi Kawahara ◽

Yutaka Sato ◽

Motohiro Sakai

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Attentional Disengagement

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Time-Course of Attentional Bias for Positive Social Words in Individuals with High and Low Social Anxiety

Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy ◽

10.1017/s1352465813000398 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 42 (4) ◽

pp. 479-490 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Hongyu Yu ◽

Songwei Li ◽

Mingyi Qian ◽

Peng Yang ◽

Xiaoling Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Attentional Bias ◽

Time Course ◽

Empirical Literature ◽

Response Latencies ◽

Main Effect ◽

High Social Anxiety ◽

Different Response ◽

Positive Stimuli ◽

Social Words

Background: Although accumulating research demonstrates the association between attentional bias and social anxiety, the bias for positive stimuli has so far not been adequately studied. Aims: The aim is to investigate the time-course of attentional bias for positive social words in participants with high and low social anxiety. Method: In a modified dot-probe task, word-pairs of neutral and positive social words were randomly presented for 100, 500, and 1250 milliseconds in a nonclinical sample of students to test their attentional bias. Results: Non-significant interaction of Group × Exposure Duration was found. However, there was a significant main effect of group, with significantly different response latencies between the high social anxiety (HSA) and low social anxiety (LSA) groups in the 100 ms condition, without for 500 or 1250 ms. With respect to attentional bias, the LSA group showed enhanced preferential attention for positive social words to which the HSA group showed avoidance in the 100 ms condition. In the 500 ms condition, preferential attention to positive social words was at trend in the LSA group, relative to the HSA group. Neither group showed attentional bias in the 1250 ms condition. Conclusions: These findings extend recent research about the attention training program and add to the empirical literature suggesting that the initial avoidance of positive stimuli may contribute to maintaining social anxiety.

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Time-Course of Selective Attention for Emotional Words in Social Anxiety

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e525162007-001 ◽

2006 ◽

Author(s):

Jun Moriya ◽

Yoshihiko Tanno

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Selective Attention ◽

Time Course ◽

Emotional Words

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Characterizing the time course and nature of attentional disengagement effects

Vision Research ◽

10.1016/j.visres.2012.01.010 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 56 ◽

pp. 38-48 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Daniel P. Blakely ◽

Timothy J. Wright ◽

Vincent M. Dehili ◽

Walter R. Boot ◽

James R. Brockmole

Keyword(s):

Time Course ◽

Attentional Disengagement

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Time course of attentional bias in social anxiety: The effects of spatial frequencies and individual threats

Psychophysiology ◽

10.1111/psyp.13617 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 57 (9) ◽

Author(s):

Xiaofei Dong ◽

Chuanji Gao ◽

Chunyan Guo ◽

Wen Li ◽

Lixia Cui

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Attentional Bias ◽

Time Course ◽

Spatial Frequencies

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Eye-Tracking Evidence of a Maintenance Bias in Social Anxiety

Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy ◽

10.1017/s1352465817000418 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 66-83 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Catarina Fernandes ◽

Susana Silva ◽

Joana Pires ◽

Alexandra Reis ◽

Antónia Jimenez Ros ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Eye Tracking ◽

Dwell Time ◽

Time Course ◽

Personality Structure ◽

Socially Anxious ◽

Dynamic Measures ◽

High Social Anxiety ◽

Depressive Personality

Background: The mechanisms and triggers of the attentional bias in social anxiety are not yet fully determined, and the modulating role of personality traits is being increasingly acknowledged. Aims: Our main purpose was to test whether social anxiety is associated with mechanisms of hypervigilance, avoidance (static biases), vigilance-avoidance or the maintenance of attention (dynamic biases). Our secondary goal was to explore the role of personality structure in shaping the attention bias. Method: Participants with high vs low social anxiety and different personality structures viewed pairs of faces (free-viewing eye-tracking task) representing different emotions (anger, happiness and neutrality). Their eye movements were registered and analysed for both whole-trial (static) and time-dependent (dynamic) measures. Results: Comparisons between participants with high and low social anxiety levels did not yield evidence of differences in eye-tracking measures for the whole trial (latency of first fixation, first fixation direction, total dwell time), but the two groups differed in the time course of overt attention during the trial (dwell time across three successive time segments): participants with high social anxiety were slower in disengaging their attention from happy faces. Similar results were obtained using a full-sample, regression-based analysis. Conclusion: Our results speak in favour of a maintenance bias in social anxiety. Preliminary results indicated that personality structure may not affect the maintenance (dynamic) bias of socially anxious individuals, although depressive personality structures may favour manifestations of a (static) hypervigilance bias.

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