scholarly journals Rejection sensitivity and disruption of attention by social threat cues

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1064-1072 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy R. Berenson ◽  
Anett Gyurak ◽  
Özlem Ayduk ◽  
Geraldine Downey ◽  
Matthew J. Garner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rejection Sensitivity ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Threat Cues

Attentional characteristics of Chinese college students receiving social threat cues in rejection situations

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (8) ◽  
pp. 1293-1304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shen Liu ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Qun Tan ◽  
Yanlin Zhao ◽  
Qiang Xu
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Rejection Sensitivity ◽  
Social Rejection ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Social Avoidance ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Chinese College Students ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
Threat Cues

We investigated the attentional characteristics of 98 Chinese college students when they received social threat cues in explicit and ambiguous rejection situations, and further examined the moderating effect of degree of rejection sensitivity. Participants were instructed to play an interactive game in pairs, after which they completed the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire for College Students and, finally, a dot-probe task. The results showed that all participants had an attentional bias toward social rejection cues in both social rejection and general situations. In the ambiguous rejection situation, highly rejection-sensitive individuals showed attentional bias and tended to avoid social threat cues and nonsocial negative cues. Degree of rejection sensitivity moderated the relationship of ambiguous rejection, influencing individuals' attentional processing of threat cues. We sought to develop some specific interventions that could be used to alert highly rejection-sensitive college students to the characteristics of the attentional processing strategies they use for social avoidance.

SOCIAL ANXIETY, SELF-FOCUSED ATTENTION, AND THE DISCRIMINATION OF NEGATIVE, NEUTRAL AND POSITIVE AUDIENCE MEMBERS BY THEIR NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOURS

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Perowne ◽  
Warren Mansell
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Socially Anxious ◽  
Anxiety Group ◽  
Threat Cues ◽  
High Social Anxiety

Recent research indicates the apparent paradox that social anxiety may be associated with both self-focused attention and selective attention to external social threat cues. A naturalistic paradigm was designed to explore both processes. High and low socially anxious individuals were asked to make a speech to a monitor displaying six people whom they believed to be watching them live. Two audience members exhibited only positive behaviours, two only neutral ones and two only negative behaviours. In contrast to the low social anxiety group who selectively discriminated positive audience members, the high social anxiety group selectively discriminated the negative individuals, yet they were no more accurate at discriminating the negative behaviours the audience members had performed and they reported more self-focused attention than the low social anxiety group. The effects remained while covarying for differences in dysphoria. The results indicate that socially anxious individuals base their judgements of being disapproved by others on limited processing of their social environment.

scholarly journals Social aversive generalization learning sharpens the tuning of visuocortical neurons to facial identity cues

eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannik Stegmann ◽  
Lea Ahrens ◽  
Paul Pauli ◽  
Andreas Keil ◽  
Matthias J Wieser
Keyword(s):  
Generalization Test ◽  
Contributory Factor ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Facial Identity ◽  
Perception Of Threat ◽  
System Activation ◽  
Fear Generalization ◽  
Threat Cues ◽  
Healthy Participants

Defensive system activation promotes heightened perception of threat signals, and excessive attention to threat signals has been discussed as a contributory factor in the etiology of anxiety disorders. However, a mechanistic account of attentional modulation during fear-relevant processes, especially during fear generalization remains elusive. To test the hypothesis that social fear generalization prompts sharpened tuning in the visuocortical representation of social threat cues, 67 healthy participants underwent differential fear conditioning, followed by a generalization test in which participants viewed faces varying in similarity with the threat-associated face. We found that generalization of social threat sharpens visuocortical tuning of social threat cues, whereas ratings of fearfulness showed generalization, linearly decreasing with decreasing similarity to the threat-associated face. Moreover, individuals who reported greater anxiety in social situations also showed heightened sharpened tuning of visuocortical neurons to facial identity cues, indicating the behavioral relevance of visuocortical tuning during generalization learning.

scholarly journals Sustained Preferential Processing of Social Threat Cues: Bias without Competition?

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 1973-1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias J. Wieser ◽  
Lisa M. McTeague ◽  
Andreas Keil
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Attentional Resource ◽  
Continuous Measure ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Socially Anxious ◽  
Personal Significance ◽  
Visual Areas ◽  
Threat Cues

Stimuli of high emotional significance such as social threat cues are preferentially processed in the human brain. However, there is an ongoing debate whether or not these stimuli capture attention automatically and weaken the processing of concurrent stimuli in the visual field. This study examined continuous fluctuations of electrocortical facilitation during competition of two spatially separated facial expressions in high and low socially anxious individuals. Two facial expressions were flickered for 3000 msec at different frequencies (14 and 17.5 Hz) to separate the electrocortical signals evoked by the competing stimuli (“frequency tagging”). Angry faces compared to happy and neutral expressions were associated with greater electrocortical facilitation over visual areas only in the high socially anxious individuals. This finding was independent of the respective competing stimulus. Heightened electrocortical engagement in socially anxious participants was present in the first second of stimulus viewing and was sustained for the entire presentation period. These results, based on a continuous measure of attentional resource allocation, support the view that stimuli of high personal significance are associated with early and sustained prioritized sensory processing. These cues, however, do not interfere with the electrocortical processing of a spatially separated concurrent face, suggesting that they are effective at capturing attention, but are weak competitors for resources.

scholarly journals Fears of Positive versus Negative Evaluation: Distinct and Conjoint Neuroendocrine, Emotional, and Cardiovascular Responses to Social Threat

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 632-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin W. Weeks ◽  
Peggy M. Zoccola
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
State Anxiety ◽  
Cardiovascular Responses ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Safety Behavior ◽  
Speech Task ◽  
Threat Cues ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Responses

Fear of evaluation in general is important in social anxiety, including fear of positive evaluation (FPE) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE). The present study examined various FPE- and FNE-associated state responses (i.e., affective, cardiovascular, and neuroendocrine) to an impromptu speech task which integrated simultaneous and systematic delivery of positive and negative social threat cues (n = 100 [unselected]). Both FPE and FNE related positively to state anxiety and heart rate changes from anticipation of the speech to during the speech itself, and these effects were partly conjoint and partly unique. Furthermore, high FPE alone was associated with dampened cortisol in response to the speech task in contrast to a more normative, robust response to social threat. Last, consistent with hypothesis and prior findings, state anxiety during the speech mediated the relationship between trait FPE and state disqualification of positive social outcomes (a mental safety behavior for FPE-related state anxiety). These results further inform upon the commonalities and distinctions between these two socio-evaluative fears. Implications for the theoretical conceptualization and treatment of social anxiety are discussed.

scholarly journals How do social fears in adolescence develop? Fear conditioning shapes attention orienting to social threat cues

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 1139-1147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anneke D. M. Haddad ◽  
Shmuel Lissek ◽  
Daniel S. Pine ◽  
Jennifer Y. F. Lau
Keyword(s):  
Fear Conditioning ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Attention Orienting ◽  
Threat Cues

scholarly journals Social aversive generalization learning sharpens the tuning of visuocortical neurons to facial identity cues

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannik Stegmann ◽  
Andreas Keil ◽  
Matthias J Wieser
Keyword(s):  
Generalization Test ◽  
Contributory Factor ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Social Stimuli ◽  
Facial Identity ◽  
Perception Of Threat ◽  
System Activation ◽  
Fear Generalization ◽  
Threat Cues

Defensive system activation promotes heightened perception of threat signals, and excessive attention to threat signals has been discussed as a contributory factor in the etiology of anxiety disorders. However, a mechanistic account of attentional modulation during fear-relevant processes, especially during fear generalization remains elusive. To test the hypothesis that social fear generalization prompts sharpened tuning in the visuocortical representation of social threat cues, 67 healthy participants underwent differential fear conditioning, followed by a generalization test in which participants viewed faces varying in similarity with the threat-associated face. We found that generalization of social threat sharpens visuocortical tuning of social threat cues, whereas ratings of fearfulness showed generalization, linearly decreasing with decreasing similarity to the threat-associated face. Moreover, individuals who reported greater anxiety in social situations also showed heightened sharpened tuning of visuocortical neurons to facial identity cues, suggesting that anxiety may improve the visual system’s discrimination of threatening social stimuli.

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