Study of attentional bias in social anxious individuals

Abstract

Objective To study the attentional bias to threatening faces images of high and low social anxiety subjects in the threatening and non- threatening conditions.Methods 23 high social anxious subjects (HSAs) and 24 low social anxious subjects (LSAs) were chosen from 500 volunteers according to the score and divided randomly into two groups,one group was under the threatening condition (expecting to give a short speech) and the other under the non- threatening condition,and then a dot-probe task was performed and the attentional bias score (ABS) was recorded.Results Under the threatening condition,the ABS of HSAs and LSAs were (-2.63±1.83)ms and (0.42±1.36)ms,the different was significant (t=-4.641,P=0.000);under the non- threatening condition,the ABS of HSAs and LSAs were (-0.41±1.56)ms and (0.47±0.67)ms,the different was not significant (t=-1.732,P=0.106).The ABS of HSAs under the threatening and non- threatening condition were (-2.63±1.83)ms and (-0.41±1.56)ms,the different was significant (t=-3.122,P=0.005);the ABS of LSAs under the threatening and non- threatening condition were (0.42±1.36)ms and (0.47±0.67)ms,the different was not significant(t=-0.124,P=0.903).The effect of the interaction between social anxiety and the experiment condition on ABS was significant (F=6.881,P=0.012).The separately main effect of social anxiety and the experiment condition on ABS was significant (F=20.429,P=0.000) and (F=6.413,P=0.015) too.Conclusion Social anxious individuals attend to avoid the threatening faces images,especially under the threatening condition. Key words: Social anxiety; Attentional bias; Dot-probe task; Collage students