Social anxiety and narrowed attentional breadth toward faces.

Yoon, K. Lira; Vidaurri, Desirae N.; Joormann, Jutta; Raedt, Rudi De

doi:10.1037/emo0000070

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Also, individual differences in the extent to which people focus their attention on specific stimuli (e.g., threats vs. neutral stimuli) has been associated with differences in fear generalisation (Baker et al 2019). Attention is thought to differ between individuals in terms of both the location of its focus (where one attends to) and its breadth (whether it is broad/global or narrow/local; Yoon et al 2015). The present investigation provides the first examination of attentional breadth to fear generalisation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brief Training to Modify the Breadth of Attention Influences the Generalisation of Fear

et al. 2020

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Background Generalisation of fear from dangerous to safe stimuli is an important process associated with anxiety disorders. However, factors that contribute towards fear (over)-generalisation remain poorly understood. The present investigation explored how attentional breadth (global/holistic and local/analytic) influences fear generalisation and, whether people trained to attend in a global vs. local manner show more or less generalisation. Methods Participants (N = 39) were shown stimuli which comprised of large ‘global’ letters and smaller ‘local’ letters (e.g. an F comprised of As) and they either had to identify the global or local letter. Participants were then conditioned to fear a face by pairing it with an aversive scream (75% reinforcement schedule). Perceptually similar, but safe, faces, were then shown. Self-reported fear levels and skin conductance responses were measured. Results Compared to participants in Global group, participants in Local group demonstrated greater fear for dangerous stimulus (CS +) as well as perceptually similar safe stimuli. Conclusions Participants trained to attend to stimuli in a local/analytical manner showed higher magnitude of fear acquisition and generalisation than participants trained to attend in a global/holistic way. Breadth of attentional focus can influence overall fear levels and fear generalisation and this can be manipulated via attentional training.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brief Training to Modify the Breadth of Attention Influences the Generalisation of Fear

et al. 2020

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“…Furthermore, Kircanski et al (2015) found that attention processing differed when processing faces of different emotions. However, findings from other studies suggested that attentional costs in anxious and depressive participants were not modulated by emotional valence (Kaiser et al, 2003;Rossignol et al, 2012;Yoon et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Dissociated deficits in attentional networks in social anxiety and depression

Wang

Fang

2020

Sci. China Life Sci.

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A critical cognitive symptom that is commonly involved in social anxiety and depression is attentional deficit. However, the functional relationship between attentional deficit and these two disorders remains poorly understood. Here, we behaviorally disentangled the three key attentional components (alerting, orienting, and executive control) using the established attentional network task (ANT) to investigate how social anxiety and depression are related to deficits in these attention components. We identified a double dissociation between the symptoms of social anxiety and depression and the attentional component deficits when processing non-emotional stimuli. While individuals vulnerable to social anxiety exhibited deficits in the orienting component, individuals vulnerable to depression were impaired in the executive control component. Our findings showed that social anxiety and depression were associated with deficits in different attentional components, which are not specific to emotional information.

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“…Considering these differences, it is possible that, in “natural” scenes, socially anxious individuals do not necessarily generate vivid mental imagery, whereas in “social” situations, they might exhibit vivid imagery. The different functions of neutral and social information in social anxiety were observed in attentional functions ( Moriya and Tanno, 2010 ; Yoon et al, 2015 ). Socially anxious individuals exhibited broadened attentional scope for neutral stimuli (e.g., letters) to process peripheral stimuli, whereas they showed narrowed attention for social stimuli (e.g., faces).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association between Social Anxiety and Visual Mental Imagery of Neutral Scenes: The Moderating Role of Effortful Control

Moriya

2018

Front. Psychol.

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According to cognitive theories, verbal processing attenuates emotional processing, whereas visual imagery enhances emotional processing and contributes to the maintenance of social anxiety. Individuals with social anxiety report negative mental images in social situations. However, the general ability of visual mental imagery of neutral scenes in individuals with social anxiety is still unclear. The present study investigated the general ability of non-emotional mental imagery (vividness, preferences for imagery vs. verbal processing, and object or spatial imagery) and the moderating role of effortful control in attenuating social anxiety. The participants (N = 231) completed five questionnaires. The results showed that social anxiety was not necessarily associated with all aspects of mental imagery. As suggested by theories, social anxiety was not associated with a preference for verbal processing. However, social anxiety was positively correlated with the visual imagery scale, especially the object imagery scale, which concerns the ability to construct pictorial images of individual objects. Further, it was negatively correlated with the spatial imagery scale, which concerns the ability to process information about spatial relations between objects. Although object imagery and spatial imagery positively and negatively predicted the degree of social anxiety, respectively, these effects were attenuated when socially anxious individuals had high effortful control. Specifically, in individuals with high effortful control, both object and spatial imagery were not associated with social anxiety. Socially anxious individuals might prefer to construct pictorial images of individual objects in natural scenes through object imagery. However, even in individuals who exhibit these features of mental imagery, effortful control could inhibit the increase in social anxiety.

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Social anxiety and narrowed attentional breadth toward faces.

Cited by 11 publications

References 31 publications

Brief Training to Modify the Breadth of Attention Influences the Generalisation of Fear

Brief Training to Modify the Breadth of Attention Influences the Generalisation of Fear

Dissociated deficits in attentional networks in social anxiety and depression

Association between Social Anxiety and Visual Mental Imagery of Neutral Scenes: The Moderating Role of Effortful Control

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