Anxiety meets fear in perception of dynamic expressive gaze.

Abstract

This study investigated in 2 experiments whether reflexive cuing of attention that occurs after perception of a gaze cue is greater for fearful than for happy faces in normal participants, as hypothesized from a social neuroscience perspective. To increase neuroecological validity, dynamic stimulus presentation was used to display faces that simultaneously morphed from a neutral expression into a happy or fearful one and shifted eye gaze from the center to the periphery. Shifts of attention resulting from a natural fearful gaze were expected to be related to participants' anxiety traits, in agreement with the often found increased selective attention to threat in anxious participants. Both hypotheses were confirmed: Fearful faces induced stronger gaze cuing than happy faces, and the strength of this cuing effect was correlated to participants' anxiety levels. These results suggest a neural network, which integrates the processing of gaze, expression, and emotional states to adaptively prime vigilance under threatening circumstances.

“Avoiding or approaching eyes”? Introversion/extraversion affects the gaze-cueing effect

“…Hietanen and LeppŠnen (2003) did not find any influence of the emotional facial expression on the gaze-cueing effect. In contrast, Putman et al (2006) reported a combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression on spatial attention using dynamic stimuli, with stronger gaze-cueing effects for faces changing expression from neutral to fearful than from neutral to happy; however, the strength of the cueing effect was significantly correlated to of anxiety. Two more studies have confirmed that the interactive effect of gaze direction and facial expression is largely modulated by trait anxiety.…”

“…Several authors (Fox et al 2007;Putman et al 2006) have demonstrated that high levels of trait anxiety enhance gaze congruency effect to fearful with respect to neutral, happy and angry facial expressions. Actually, in Fox et al (2007) in the averted gaze conditions fearful expressions increased attentional orienting response in high-anxious subjects, while angry expressions inhibited…”

Fearful, surprised, happy, and angry facial expressions modulate gaze-oriented attention: Behavioral and ERP evidence

“…This robust Gaze Orienting Effect (GOE) was shown for letter discrimination, target detection, or localization tasks, for Stimulus Onset Asynchronies (SOAs) up to 700 ms, and when the cue is non-predictive or even counter-predictive of the target location (for a review, see Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper, 2007 Many studies have investigated whether emotions modulate attention orienting by gaze. A GOE increase with fearful compared to neutral and/or happy faces has been reported and interpreted as reflecting the evolutionary advantage to orient rapidly in the direction of a potential threat (Bayless, Glover, Taylor, & Itier, 2011;Fox, Mathews, Calder, & Yiend, 2007;Graham, Friesen, Fichtenholtz, & LaBar, 2010;Mathews, Fox, Yiend, & Calder, 2003;Pecchinenda, Pes, Ferlazzo, & Zoccolotti, 2008;Putman, Hermans, & Van Honk, 2006;Tipples, 2006). However, some studies failed to report such a modulation (Fichtenholtz, Hopfinger, Graham, Detwiler, & LaBar, 2007;Galfano et al, 2011;Hietanen & Leppänen, 2003;Holmes, Mogg, Garcia, & Bradley, 2010).…”

“…Finally, this lack of GOE modulation by fear could originate from the use of static rather than dynamic facial expressions (e.g., Hietanen & Leppänen, 2003), since emotions are better processed when seen dynamically than statically (Sato & Yoshikawa, 2004). Additionally, some studies have shown that the GOE enhancement for fearful compared to neutral or happy faces depended on participants' anxiety level (Fox et al, 2007;Mathews et al, 2003;Putman et al, 2006), while others reported such a modulation even in non-anxious participants (Bayless et al, 2011;Neath, Nilsen, Gittsovich, & Itier, 2013). Thus, it remains unclear whether modulation of attention orienting by gaze with fear is limited to highanxious individuals or can be seen in the general population.…”

Avaliação da ansiedade e do viés de atenção no canal visual para estímulos emocionais em uma amostra não clínica

“…Dentre os estímulos utilizados na construção dos experimentos estão imagens com alto grau de ativação e valência de agradabilidade negativa (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996;Hamm, Greenwald, Bradley, & Lang, 1993;Lang & Davis, 2006;Lang, Levin, Miller, & Kozak, 1983;Lang, McTeague, & Cuthbert, 2006;Lavy & Hout, 1994;Miller et al, 1987). Apesar de alguns estudos utilizarem faces emocionais como estímulos (Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002;Mogg, Garner, & Bradley, 2007;Putman, Hermans, & van Honk, 2006) ou até mesmo palavras (Eckhardt & Cohen, 1997;Hester, Dixon, & Garavan, 2006;Peretti, 1998), outros têm sido construídos com base nas imagens do Interational Affective Picture System -IAPS (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999). Tais estudos costumam adotar como critério para seleção dos estímulos, exatamente o nível de ativação e valência (Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, & De Houwer, 2004;Liu, Qian, Zhou, & Wang, 2006).…”