Hyperscanning and avoidance in social anxiety disorder: The visual scanpath during public speaking

Chen, Nigel Teik Ming; Thomas, Laurenn Maree; Clarke, Patrick; Hickie, Ian B.; Guastella, Adam J.

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2014.11.025

Cited by 48 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…However, contrary to a number of previous studies (Chen et al, 2015(Chen et al, , 2002Mansell et al, 1999) we found little evidence of avoidance of faces in the HSA group, which might be accounted for in part by the neutral valence of our social stimulus, or alternatively our interpretation of avoidance. If we based all of our interpretations upon first fixation parameters (Armstrong & Olatunji, 2012;Garner et al, 2006) we could interpret the shorter first fixation durations on the face in the HSA group as avoidance.…”

Section: Naturalistic Social Attention In Social Anxiety 21contrasting

confidence: 99%

“…The reason for this may be the neutral valence of the scene and/or the limited number of actors present. The most comparable study to the current research presented participants with an array of faces which gave positive, negative or neutral facial feedback to participants dynamically over the trial (Chen et al, 2015). In such a scenario, scanning from face to face would be expected if participants were continually monitoring for threat.…”

Section: Naturalistic Social Attention In Social Anxiety 21mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Within the SAD literature, the only eye-tracking study to use dynamic complex social stimuli surprisingly did not conduct temporal data analyses (Chen, Thomas, Clarke, Hickie, & Guastella, 2015). SAD participants looked less at the positive and negative faces of audience members whilst giving a four minute speech than controls, suggesting some avoidance, but no differences in gaze were found during an initial period where the audience maintained neutral expressions.…”

Section: Naturalistic Social Attention In Social Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally to provide an overall assessment of the eye movements of participants over the entire scene, we analysed overall proportion of dwell time to each interest area (faces, bodies, background). Differences in dwell time particularly to the face between the groups over the whole scene might support a maintenance or avoidance interpretation (Chen et al, 2015).…”

Section: Eye Movement Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, those who are socially anxious have longer scanpaths than those who are not, and this has been interpreted as being a marker of a vigilant viewing strategy referred NATURALISTIC SOCIAL ATTENTION IN SOCIAL ANXIETY to as "hyperscanning". (Chen et al, 2015;Holmqvist et al, 2011;Horley et al, 2003). A longer scanpath could be the result of larger amplitude saccades, more frequent saccades/fixations and/or shorter duration fixations or a combination thereof.…”

Section: Eye Movement Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Attention to faces and gaze-following in social anxiety: preliminary evidence from a naturalistic eye-tracking investigation

Gregory

Bolderston

Antolin

2018

Cognition and Emotion

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Social attentional biases are a core component of social anxiety disorder, but research has not yet determined their direction due to methodological limitations. Here we present preliminary findings from a novel, dynamic eye-tracking paradigm allowing spatial-temporal measurement of attention and gaze-following, a mechanism previously unexplored in social anxiety. 105 participants took part, with those high (N = 27) and low (N = 25) in social anxiety traits (HSA and LSA respectively) entered into the analyses. Participants watched a video of an emotionally-neutral social scene, where two actors periodically shifted their gaze towards the periphery. HSA participants looked more at the actors' faces during the initial 2s than the LSA group but there were no group differences in proportion of first fixations to the face or latency to first fixate the face, although HSA individuals' first fixations to the face were shorter. No further differences in eye movements were found, nor in gaze-following behaviour, although these null effects could potentially result from the relatively small sample. Findings suggest attention is biased towards faces in HSA individuals during initial scene inspection, but that overt gaze-following may be impervious to individual differences in social anxiety. Future research should seek to replicate these effects.

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Section: Naturalistic Social Attention In Social Anxiety 21contrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Naturalistic Social Attention In Social Anxiety 21mentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Naturalistic Social Attention In Social Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Eye Movement Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Eye Movement Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Attention to faces and gaze-following in social anxiety: preliminary evidence from a naturalistic eye-tracking investigation

Gregory

Bolderston

Antolin

2018

Cognition and Emotion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Neural Correlates Supported by Eye Movements of Self-Focused Attention and Other-Focused Attention in Social Situations

2020

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Frozen with Fear? Attentional Mechanisms in Children with Selective Mutism

2022

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Background Children with selective mutism (SM) are consistently unable to speak in certain social situations. Due to an overlap between SM and social anxiety disorder (SAD) in children, similar mechanisms could apply to both disorders. Especially biased attentional processing of threat and fear-induced reduced visual exploration (referred to as attentive freezing) appear promising in SM. Methods A total of N = 84 children (8–12 years, SM: n = 28, SAD: n = 28, typical development (TD): n = 28) participated in an eye-tracking paradigm with videos of a social counterpart expressing a question, a social evaluation or a neutral statement. We investigated gaze behavior towards the social counterpart’s eye-region and the extent of visual exploration (length of scanpath), across conditions. Results There were no group differences regarding gaze behavior on the eye region. Neither gaze behavior with respect to the eye region nor visual exploration were dependent on the video condition. Compared to children with TD, children with SM generally showed less visual exploration, however children with SAD did not. Conclusion Reduced visual exploration might be due to the mechanism of attentive freezing, which could be part of an extensive fear response in SM that might also affect speech-production. Interventions that counteract the state of freezing could be promising for the therapy of SM.

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Hyperscanning and avoidance in social anxiety disorder: The visual scanpath during public speaking

Cited by 48 publications

References 42 publications

Attention to faces and gaze-following in social anxiety: preliminary evidence from a naturalistic eye-tracking investigation

Attention to faces and gaze-following in social anxiety: preliminary evidence from a naturalistic eye-tracking investigation

Neural Correlates Supported by Eye Movements of Self-Focused Attention and Other-Focused Attention in Social Situations

Frozen with Fear? Attentional Mechanisms in Children with Selective Mutism

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