Attentional disengagement from socially threatening stimuli in social anxiety

Abstract

We investigated whether selective attention towards threat-related stimuli in social anxiety was associated with the di$culty of disengagement from the stimuli. Participants were divided into two groups: high social anxiety and low social anxiety. They kept their eyes focused on a center prime stimulus (social threat, neutral word, or symbol), which was presented for either 100 ms or 800 ms. The target stimulus was then presented to either the left or the right of the prime stimuli, and the participants judged the location of the target stimulus. The results indicate that, in contrast to low socially anxious students, high socially anxious students took longer to make decisions for socially-threatening words presented for 800 ms, and that their response latencies were also slower for socially-threatening words than for neutral words and symbol. However, no significant di#erences were observed in reaction times between the high and low socially anxious students when the prime stimuli were presented for 100 ms. These findings suggest that individuals with high social anxiety have di$culty in disengaging their visual attention from socially-threatening words when presented for longer periods.

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

“…Previous studies revealed impaired attentional disengagement from threatening stimuli in anxious and socially anxious people (Fox et al, 2001;Georgiou et al, 2005;Moriya & Tanno, 2007;Yiend & Mathews, 2001). However, these results did not differentiate between the effects of attentional disengagement, shift, and engagement.…”

“…The impaired attentional disengagement from threatening stimuli may also be a problem for socially anxious people; however, few studies have focused on attentional disengagement in social anxiety (Amir et al, 2003;Moriya & Tanno, 2007). In the field of social anxiety, avoidant behavior in social situations or avoidance of eye contact has been studied as important characteristics of social anxiety (Dell'Osso et al, 2003;Horley, Williams, Gonsalvez, & Gordon, 2004).…”

“…Moriya and Tanno (2007) revealed that socially anxious people could disengage from socially threatening words at 100 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA 1 ). However, the impaired attentional disengagement from the threatening words was found at 800ms SOA.…”

“…After attending to the threatening stimuli, the attentional mechanisms of anxious and non-anxious people may differ. Previous studies have shown that anxious people focus on threatening stimuli and face difficulty in disengaging their attention from the stimuli (Amir, Elias, Klumpp, & Przeworski, 2003;Fox, Russo, Bowles, & Dutton, 2001;Fox et al, 2002;Georgiou et al, 2005;Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, & de Houwer, 2004;Moriya & Tanno, 2007;Yiend & Mathews, 2001). For example, in Fox et al (2001), an emotional word (i.e., neutral, positive, or threatening word) was presented as a cue stimulus at the center of a screen for 600 ms. Then, a target stimulus appeared either above, below, to the left, or to the right of the word.…”

Étude du biais d’attention sélective envers les stimuli menaçants et sécurisants dans l’anxiété-trait : Considération du décours temporel.

“…Le fait que cette détérioration du désengagement attentionnel intervient pour une durée de présentation du mot de 1250 ms implique qu'elle dépendrait de processus stratégiques, postérieurs au traitement sémantique du mot. Ce bais attentionnel serait donc expliqué par une difficulté tardive de désengagement du mot menaçant et viendrait confirmer les résultats de Moriya et Tanno (2007), qui retrouvent une détérioration du désengagement attentionnel du mot à 800 ms. Ce résultat, qui méritera d'être reproduit avec un plus grand échantillon, voire une population clinique, et une validation des mots utilisés, vient soutenir les recherches proposant un traitement spécifique de la menace dans l'anxiété (par ex., Williams et al, 1997) et non un module de la détection de la pertinence (par ex., Fox, Griggs & Mouchlianitis, 2007), dans la mesure où nous n'observons pas de biais attentionnel envers les informations sécurisantes, qui sont également pertinentes. Cependant, nous pouvons modérer cette interprétation dans la mesure où l'absence de biais attentionnel envers l'information sécurisante pourrait être expliquée, d'une part, par la non-perception par les participants du caractère sécurisant des mots utilisés et, d'autre part, par l'absence d'activation anxieuse de l'individu lors de l'expérience.…”