Subliminal cues bias perception of facial affect in patients with social phobia: evidence for enhanced unconscious threat processing

Abstract

Socially anxious individuals have been shown to exhibit altered processing of facial affect, especially expressions signaling threat. Enhanced unaware processing has been suggested an important mechanism which may give rise to anxious conscious cognition and behavior. This study investigated whether individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) are perceptually more vulnerable to the biasing effects of subliminal threat cues compared to healthy controls. In a perceptual judgment task, 23 SAD and 23 matched control participants were asked to rate the affective valence of parametrically manipulated affective expressions ranging from neutral to angry. Each trial was preceded by subliminal presentation of an angry/neutral cue. The SAD group tended to rate target faces as “angry” when the preceding subliminal stimulus was angry vs. neutral, while healthy participants were not biased by the subliminal stimulus presentation. The perceptual bias in SAD was also associated with higher reaction time latencies in the subliminal angry cue condition. The results provide further support for enhanced unconscious threat processing in SAD individuals. The implications for etiology, maintenance, and treatment of SAD are discussed.

Subliminal or not? Comparing null-hypothesis and Bayesian methods for testing subliminal priming

“…This method is sometimes used as the main analysis or as an additional analysis after the double t-test method (e.g., Jusyte & Schönenberg, 2014;Ocampo, 2015;Schoeberl et al, 2015;Xiao & Yamauchi, 2014). In this analysis, d 0 d is used as the regressor and d 0 i as the outcome variable.…”

“…In the simulations so far, more trials were used for the indirect than the direct measure, as this is a common practice in experiments (e.g., Jusyte & Schönenberg, 2014;Kiefer et al, 2015;Lin & Murray, 2015;Schoeberl et al, 2015). The difference in the number of trials results in smaller error (and thus more power) in the indirect than the direct measure.…”

“…Observers, however, differ in their thresholds (e.g., Albrecht & Mattler, 2012;Dagenbach, Carr, & Wilhelmsen, 1989;Greenwald, Klinger, & Schuh, 1995;Haase & Fisk, 2015;Sand, 2016). To take individual differences in thresholds (and thus perception, given a specific prime stimulus intensity) into account, another conventional analysis is regression analysis (e.g., Jusyte & Schönenberg, 2014;Ocampo, 2015;Schoeberl et al, 2015;Xiao & Yamauchi, 2014). In regression analysis, the direct measure is used as the regressor and the indirect measure is the outcome variable.…”

“…Proponents of the double ttest method are also of course aware of this, but would argue that the strategy still can, and indeed does, do a good job of identifying subliminal priming. Therefore, the double t-test remains the most popular analytical method in research into subliminal priming (e.g., González-García, Tudela, & Ruz, 2015;Huang, Tan, Soon, & Hsieh, 2014;Jusyte & Schönenberg, 2014;Kido & Makioka, 2015;Kiefer et al, 2015;Lin & Murray, 2015;Marcos Malmierca, 2015;Norman, Heywood, & Kentridge, 2015;Ocampo, 2015;Ocampo, Al-Janabi, & Finkbeiner, 2015;Schoeberl, Fuchs, Theeuwes, & Ansorge, 2015;Wildegger, Myers, Humphreys, & Nobre, 2015).…”

“…Observed d 0 d was based on n d = 100 trials and d 0 i was based on n i = 200 trials, as previous studies have typically used more trials in the indirect than the direct task (e.g., Jusyte & Schönenberg, 2014;Kiefer et al, 2015;Lin & Murray, 2015;Ocampo, 2015;Schoeberl et al, 2015). Fig.…”