Neural responses associated with attentional engagement and disengagement from threat in high socially anxious children: Evidence from temporal-spatial PCA.

Erika Wauthia,Laurent Lefebvre,Mandy Rossignol,Wivine Blekic,Laurence Ris,Fabien D’Hondt,Zezhi Li

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0261172

Abstract

BackgroundCognitive models indicated that social anxiety disorder (SAD) would be caused and maintained by a biased attentional processing of threatening information. This study investigates whether socially anxious children may present impaired attentional engagement and disengagement from negative emotional faces, as well as their underlying event-related potential responses.Methods and findingsFifteen children with high levels of social anxiety (HSA; 9 boys; mean age = 9.99y; SD = 1.14) and twenty low socially anxious children (LSA; 16 boys; mean age = 10.47y; SD = 1.17) participated in a spatial cueing task in which they had to detect targets following neutral/disgusted faces in a valid or invalid location. No group effect was reported on reaction times [p>.05]. However, electrophysiological data showed lower P3a amplitude in HSA children compared with the LSA group when processing facial stimuli. They also reported larger N2 amplitudes for valid-disgusted targets and a larger P3a amplitude for the invalid-disgusted ones.ConclusionIn terms of electrophysiological data, our results validated, the hypothesis of attentional disengagement difficulties in SAD children. We also confirm the idea that high levels of social anxiety are associated with cognitive control impairments and have a greater impact on the processing efficiency than on the performance effectiveness.

Highlights

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) refers to a condition in which individuals experience fear when they are performing a specific social task under the scrutiny of others [1]
event-related potentials (ERP) associated to attentional bias (AB) for threat in socially anxious children disgusted faces [M = -0.35] in comparison to targets following neutral faces [M = 1.80; TWJT/c (1.0, 24.9) = 8.91; p = .005]
Results showed that high levels of social anxiety in children was not associated with behavioral manifestation of AB which confirms one of the main assumptions of the attentional control theory [19, 20] stating that the effects of anxiety are higher on processing efficiency than on performance effectiveness

Summary

Introduction

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) refers to a condition in which individuals experience fear when they are performing a specific social task under the scrutiny of others [1]. Recent research on the cognitive factors of SAD highlighted that the onset and maintenance of the disorder may arise from a biased attentional system in favor of threat-related stimuli such as human faces showing signs of disapproval or criticism [9–13]. The stimuli disappear and are followed by a visual target (e.g. a dot), presented in the spatial location previously occupied by the threatening (valid condition) or the neutral (invalid condition) stimulus. Cognitive models indicated that social anxiety disorder (SAD) would be caused and maintained by a biased attentional processing of threatening information. This study investigates whether socially anxious children may present impaired attentional engagement and disengagement from negative emotional faces, as well as their underlying event-related potential responses

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Discussion

Conclusion