Electrophysiological evidence of attentional biases in social anxiety disorder

Abstract

Background Previous studies investigating attentional biases in social anxiety disorder (SAD) have yielded mixed results. Recent event-related potential (ERP) studies employing the dot-probe paradigm in non-anxious participants have shown that the P1 component is sensitive to visuospatial attention toward emotional faces. We used a dot-probe task in conjunction with high-density ERPs and source localization to investigate attentional biases in SAD. Method Twelve SAD and 15 control participants performed a modified dot-probe task using angry-neutral and happy-neutral face-pairs. The P1 component elicited by face-pairs was analyzed to test the hypothesis that SAD participants would display early hypervigilance to threat-related cues. The P1 component to probes replacing angry, happy or neutral faces was used to evaluate whether SAD participants show sustained hypervigilance or rather decreased visual processing of threat-related cues at later processing stages. Results Compared to controls, SAD participants showed relatively (a) potentiated P1 amplitudes and fusiform gyrus activation to angry-neutral vs. happy-neutral face-pairs; (b) decreased P1 amplitudes to probes replacing emotional (angry and happy) vs. neutral faces; and (c) higher sensitivity (d′) to probes following angry-neutral vs. happy-neutral face-pairs. SAD participants also showed significantly shorter reaction times to probes replacing angry vs. happy faces, but no group differences emerged for reaction time. Conclusions The results provide electrophysiological support for early hypervigilance to angry faces in SAD with involvement of the fusiform gyrus, and reduced visual processing of emotionally salient locations at later stages of information processing, which might be a manifestation of attentional avoidance.

The effects of self-focus on attentional biases in social anxiety:An ERP study

“…This supports cognitive theories of SAD and research on early attentional biases (e.g., Mueller et al, 2009). The current study advances this literature by examining these biases with concurrent neutral and disgust faces.…”

“…ERPs can provide a temporally precise, direct measure of covert attention and may detect biases not evident in behavioral data (see Kappenman, Farrens, Luck, & Proudfit, 2014). Several studies using ERPs and related approaches have suggested that socially anxious individuals display enhanced attention to emotional faces (McTeague, Shumen, Wieser, Lang, & Keil, 2011;Rossignol, Campanella, et al, 2012;Rossignol, Philippot, Bissot, Rigoulot, & Campanella, 2012), especially those which are aversive (Kolassa, Kolassa, Musial, & Miltner, 2007;Moser, Huppert, Duval, & Simons, 2008;Mueller et al, 2009;Mühlberger et al, 2009;Sewell, Palermo, Atkinson, & McArthur, 2008). For example, studies have found evidence of enhanced attention for angry faces in social anxiety as indicated by the P2 (Rossignol, Campanella, Bissot, & Philippot, 2013;Van Peer, Spinhoven, & Roelofs, 2010), although other studies suggest enhanced attention for faces more generally (Rossignol, Philippot, Bissot, Rigoulot, & Campanella, 2012) or not at all (Kolassa et al, 2009).…”

Exposure to social-evaluative video clips: Neural, facial-muscular, and experiential responses and the role of social anxiety

“…The fact that no correlations were obtained with psychophysiological responses might either suggest that our measures lacked sensitivity or that the timing of stimuli precluded detection of the processes that generated these characteristic rating tendencies. Other research studying ERPs to emotional facial expressions in relation to social anxiety have revealed subtle alterations in early components (e.g., Mueller et al, 2009;Schmitz et al, 2012). However, the results are far from being consistent.…”

Facial affect processing in social anxiety disorder with early onset: evidence of an intensity amplification bias

“…Adult SAD patients typically show elevated amplitudes of early (e.g., P100, N170) as well as late potentials (late positivity, LP) to emotional faces (e.g., Kolassa et al, 2009;Kolassa, Kolassa, Musial, & Miltner, 2007;Kolassa & Miltner, 2006;Moser, Huppert, Duval, & Simons, 2008;Mühlberger et al, 2009;Müller et al, 2009;Rossignol, Campanella, Bissot, & Philippot, 2013;. The P100 is a positive deflection around 100 ms after stimulus onset, which represents early attention allocation (Luck & Kappenman, 2012).…”