Restricted Visual Scanpaths During Emotion Recognition in Childhood Social Anxiety Disorder

Abstract

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 of SAD. During face perception, individuals execute a succession of visual fixations known as a scanpath which facilitates information processing. 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 during face perception. Both metrics were examined in one of the largest eye-tracking studies of pediatric SAD to date.Methods: Participants were children and adolescents with SAD (n = 61) and healthy controls (n = 39) with a mean age of 14 years (range 10–17) who completed an emotion recognition task. The visual scanpath and pupil dilation (an indirect index of arousal) were examined using eye tracking.Results: Scanpaths of youth with SAD were shorter, less distributed, and consisted of a smaller number of fixations than those of healthy controls. These findings were 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: The results were 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.

Self-focused attention related to social anxiety during free speaking tasks activates the right frontopolar area

“…Alternatively, the second hypothesis might not have been supported due to the limited time resolution. We calculated the average fixation time on each AOI every 20 s. Several studies have suggested that atypical eye movements in social anxiety are much more subtle and can best be seen in the temporal and spatial distribution of the fixations (Chen et al, 2015;Kleberg et al, 2021). To heighten the time resolution, researchers have used a visual scanpath, or a tracing of the motion of the eye made while viewing a complex stimulus, and it consists of a sequence of fixations and saccades (Chen et al, 2015).…”

“…To heighten the time resolution, researchers have used a visual scanpath, or a tracing of the motion of the eye made while viewing a complex stimulus, and it consists of a sequence of fixations and saccades (Chen et al, 2015). Adults with SAD showed a longer scanpath than healthy controls during public speaking (Chen et al, 2015), whereas youth with SAD showed a shorter scanpath than healthy controls during emotional recognition (Kleberg et al, 2021). Other researchers use pupil dilation, an index of arousal, and closely link it to attention (Keil et al, 2018;Kleberg et al, 2019Kleberg et al, , 2021.…”

“…Adults with SAD showed a longer scanpath than healthy controls during public speaking (Chen et al, 2015), whereas youth with SAD showed a shorter scanpath than healthy controls during emotional recognition (Kleberg et al, 2021). Other researchers use pupil dilation, an index of arousal, and closely link it to attention (Keil et al, 2018;Kleberg et al, 2019Kleberg et al, , 2021. The youth SAD group had higher pupil dilation than controls (Kleberg et al, 2021), and larger pupil dilation to happy face stimuli before 12-week cognitive behavioral treatment for adolescent SAD was related to worse treatment response (Kleberg et al, 2019).…”

“…Other researchers use pupil dilation, an index of arousal, and closely link it to attention (Keil et al, 2018;Kleberg et al, 2019Kleberg et al, , 2021. The youth SAD group had higher pupil dilation than controls (Kleberg et al, 2021), and larger pupil dilation to happy face stimuli before 12-week cognitive behavioral treatment for adolescent SAD was related to worse treatment response (Kleberg et al, 2019). Therefore, eye tracking analysis with better time resolution, such as visual scanpath and pupil dilation, may capture the degree of SFA as well as OFA related to social anxiety.…”