Children with social anxiety disorder show blunted pupillary reactivity and altered eye contact processing in response to emotional faces: Insights from pupillometry and eye movements

Keil, Verena; Hepach, Robert; Vierrath, Severin; Caffier, Detlef; Tuschen‐Caffier, Brunna; Klein, Christoph; Schmitz, Julian

doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2018.07.001

Cited by 46 publications

(49 citation statements)

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“…Children and adolescents diagnosed with SAD look less at faces with threatening expressions, or eyes with direct gaze than healthy controls (Högström et al, 2019;Kleberg et al, 2017;Schneier et al, 2011;Weeks et al, 2013), and tend to view social scenes with atypical visual scanpaths characterised by short, widely distributed fixations (NTM Chen et al, 2015). Atypical physiological responses to faces have also been documented by studies using various outcomes and methods, including pupil dilation (Keil et al, 2018;Kleberg et al, 2019) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; Gentili et al, 2016;Gingnell et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced left visual field bias for faces in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

Löwenberg

Aili

Serlachius

et al. 2020

Cognitive Neuropsychiatry

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Introduction: Individuals tend to explore the left side of a face first and for a longer time in comparison to the right side. This left visual field (LVF) bias is suggested to reflect right hemispheric dominance for face processing. Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with maladaptive interpretations of facial expressions, but it is not known whether this is linked to an atypical LVF bias. Previous studies have reported a reduced LVF bias in autism, a condition overlapping with SAD. This pre-registered study examined the LVF bias in adolescents with SAD. Methods: Eye-tracking was used to investigate the ratio of first fixations to the left on upright and inverted face stimuli in 26 adolescents (13-17 years) with SAD and 23 healthy controls primed to look either between the eyes or at the mouth. Results: The SAD group showed a smaller LVF bias and an atypical face inversion effect when primed to look at the eyes. Autistic traits predicted a smaller LVF bias, independently of social anxiety level. Conclusions: Results suggest that SAD is associated with impaired processing of faces at an early stage of visual scanning. The findings contribute to a better understanding of SAD and its overlap with autism.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced left visual field bias for faces in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

Löwenberg

Aili

Serlachius

et al. 2020

Cognitive Neuropsychiatry

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“…Previous research has described different types of techniques for identifying emotions including self-report (Arevalillo-Herráez et al 2017;Castillejo 2018;Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope 1986;Kerns et al 2014;Maclntyre and Gardner 1994;Monkaresi et al 2017;Wixon et al 2014), physical instruments (Fernandes et al 2018;Gotardi et al 2018;Kantor et al 2001;Keil et al 2018;Krejtz et al 2018;Mucci et al 2016;Weeks, Howell, and Goldin 2013;Zhang et al 2011), and expert observers (Baker et al 2012;D'Mello and Graesser 2010). The most prominent self-report tool is the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope 1986), which has been shown to reliably measure the anxiety level in classroom settings (Park 2014;Rodríguez and Abreu 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous research using physical measures to detect anxiety has shown varying results. Some researchers used eye trackers for measuring anxiety, finding that pupil dilation was associated with anxiety (Keil et al 2018). Anxious participants also had a higher number of fixations with shorter duration (Runswick et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Foreign Language Anxiety When Using an E-Learning System

Ismail¹,

Hastings²

2019

Proceedings of the International Conferences Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2019 Game and Entertainment Technologies

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In addition to the cognitive, developmental, and pedagogical challenges of learning a second language, foreign language learners also face emotional obstacles. Negative emotions such as confusion, frustration, and anxiety interfere with the cognitive channels, which in return, moderates the learning. These emotions also diminish the sense of self-efficacy, producing a disinclination toward beneficial practice. In this research, we are focusing on foreign language anxiety (FLA). Our long-term goal is to recognize FLA and overcome it within the context of an intelligent foreign language learning system. As a first step, we are focusing on the recognition of FLA within a simple e-learning system for English language learners. To identify FLA, we correlated physical measurements (eye fixation, heart rate, and blood pressure) with emotional self-report. We found that the compound predictors of self-report of language difficulty, self-report of system difficulty, and exercise score can identify language anxiety. This finding will allow us to build a sensor-free anxiety detector which we will use to help overcome foreign language anxiety in the future.

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“…So far, a small number of eye-tracking studies have been conducted in children and adolescents with SAD (Högström et al, 2019;Schmidtendorf et al, 2018;Keil et al, 2018;Kleberg et al, 2017;Capriola-Hall et al, 2020;Kleberg et al, 2020). These studies examined the relative distribution of attention between threat-related faces and other stimuli during free viewing tasks.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Results from free-viewing tasks are inconclusive, with reports of both avoidance (Keil et al, 2018;Kleberg et al, 2017), prolonged monitoring of threat (Capriola-Hall et al, 2020;Kleberg et al, 2020) and age-typical allocation of attention (Högström et al, 2019). Previous studies are limited by small sample sizes, typically ranging between 20-35 individuals (for reviews, see (J.…”

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confidence: 99%

Restricted visual scanpaths during emotion recognition in childhood social anxiety disorder

Kleberg¹,

Löwenberg²,

Lau³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) has its typical onset in childhood and adolescence. Maladaptive processing of social information may contribute to the etiology and maintenance. During face perception, individuals extract information with a succession of visual fixations known as a scanpath. Atypically long scanpaths have been reported in adults with SAD, but no data exists from pediatric samples. SAD has also been linked to atypical arousal. Both metrics were examined in one of the largest eye-tracking studies of pediatric SAD to dateMethods: Children and adolescents with SAD (n = 62) and healthy controls (n = 39) completed an emotion recognition task. The visual scanpath and pupil dilation (an indirect index of arousal) were examined. The analysis plan was preregistered.Results: Youth with SAD showed restricted scanpaths, a finding supported by both frequentist and Bayesian statistics. Higher pupil dilation was also observed in the SAD group, but despite a statistically significant group difference, this result was not supported by the Bayesian analysis.Conclusions: Findings are contrary to findings from adult studies, but similar to what has been reported in neurodevelopmental conditions associated with social interaction impairments. Restricted scanpaths may disrupt holistic representation of faces known to favor adaptive social understanding.

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Children with social anxiety disorder show blunted pupillary reactivity and altered eye contact processing in response to emotional faces: Insights from pupillometry and eye movements

Cited by 46 publications

References 58 publications

Reduced left visual field bias for faces in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

Reduced left visual field bias for faces in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

Identifying Foreign Language Anxiety When Using an E-Learning System

Restricted visual scanpaths during emotion recognition in childhood social anxiety disorder

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