Bias In Social Anxiety Research Articles

Attention Bias and Memory Bias in Social Anxiety

Attention Bias and Memory Bias in Social Anxiety

Relationship between social anxiety and perceived trustworthiness

Four different patterns of biased ratings of facial expressions of emotions have been found in socially anxious participants: higher negative ratings of (1) negative, (2) neutral, and (3) positive facial expressions than nonanxious controls. As a fourth pattern, some studies have found no group differences in ratings of facial expressions of emotion. However, these studies usually employed valence and arousal ratings that arguably may be less able to reflect processing of social information. We examined the relationship between social anxiety and face ratings for perceived trustworthiness given that trustworthiness is an inherently socially relevant construct. Improving on earlier analytical strategies, we evaluated the four previously found result patterns using a Bayesian approach. Ninety-eight undergraduates rated 198 face stimuli on perceived trustworthiness. Subsequently, participants completed social anxiety questionnaires to assess the severity of social fears. Bayesian modeling indicated that the probability that social anxiety did not influence judgments of trustworthiness had at least three times more empirical support in our sample than assuming any kind of negative interpretation bias in social anxiety. We concluded that the deviant interpretation of facial trustworthiness is not a relevant aspect in social anxiety.

Three Components of Attentional Bias in Social Anxiety Disorder

social anxiety disorder is the obvious and continuous fear of one or more social situations and manifests itself as the attentional bias to social stimuli,which includes facilitated attention,difficulty in disengaging,attentional avoidance,the three components that interact with each other and sustain the development of social anxiety.Currently,several paradigms involving dot-probe task,spatial cueing task and visual search task,combined with the eye scanning technique,are used to study attentional bias in social anxiety disorder.However,question remains about the relationship,time course and transition of the three components and calls for further research.

A Comparison of Cognitive and Behavioral Approaches for Reducing Cost Bias in Social Anxiety.

Cognitive-behavioral theories suggest that anxiety is maintained in part by estimates of the probability and cost of feared negative outcomes. Social phobia may be unique among the anxiety disorders in that it is characterized by overestimates of the cost of events that are objectively noncatastrophic (e.g., committing social mishaps). As such, treatment approaches that target cost bias may be particularly effective in reducing social phobia symptoms. This study examined the efficacy of 2 cost-specific techniques in a single-session intervention for social anxiety. Individuals (n = 61) with elevated social interaction anxiety were randomly assigned to an expressive writing control condition, a cognitive restructuring condition, or a behavioral experiment condition. Results demonstrated that the cognitive restructuring condition produced significantly greater improvement in indices of social anxiety than the other conditions. Reduction in cost bias fully mediated the significantly greater improvement in social interaction anxiety in the cognitive restructuring condition relative to the behavioral experiment condition. The present findings highlight the value of techniques designed to reduce cost biases in social anxiety. Clinical implications are discussed.

Working memory load moderates late attentional bias in social anxiety

The vigilance–avoidance hypothesis suggests that socially anxious individuals attempt to detect signs that they are being evaluated (vigilance) and subsequently direct attention away from such stimuli (avoidance). Although extensive evidence supports vigilance, data concerning subsequent avoidance is equivocal. Drawing from models of attention, the current study hypothesised that working memory load moderates late attentional bias in social anxiety such that avoidance occurs if working memory load is low, and difficulty disengaging attention occurs if working memory load is high. Forty-one undergraduates (19 socially anxious; 22 non-anxious controls) completed a dot-probe task with emotional (happy and disgust) and neutral facial expressions and a concurrent n-back task. Results supported the hypothesis such that socially anxious subjects demonstrated avoidance of disgust faces when working memory load was absent, but had difficulty disengaging attention during high working memory load. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Clinical Implications of Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretative Biases in Social Anxiety: An Integrative Literature Review

Cognitive theories of social anxiety indicate that negative cognitive biases play a key role in causing and maintaining social anxiety. On the basis of these cognitive theories, laboratory-based research has shown that individuals with social anxiety exhibit negative interpretation biases of ambiguous social situations. Cognitive Bias Modification for interpretative biases (CBM-I) has emerged from this basic science research to modify negative interpretative biases in social anxiety and reduce emotional vulnerability and social anxiety symptoms. However, it is not yet clear if modifying interpretation biases via CBM will have any enduring effect on social anxiety symptoms or improve social functioning. The aim of this paper is to review the relevant literature on interpretation biases in social anxiety and discuss important implications of CBM-I method for clinical practice and research.

BIS, BAS, and bias: The role of personality and cognitive bias in social anxiety

The goal of the present research was to test the hypothesis that cognitive biases for negative and threatening social information mediate the effects of behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral approach system (BAS) sensitivity on social anxiety. Participants completed self-report measures of BIS and BAS and then underwent a social-threat induction procedure in which they were told they would have to perform a speech. A battery of cognitive bias measures was then administered, followed by a battery of state anxiety measures. Audience members also rated participants’ anxiety during the speech. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model. As predicted, the fully-mediated model showed the best fit to the data, and higher BIS and lower BAS were found to have significant indirect effects on social anxiety via cognitive bias.

Social anxiety biases the evaluation of facial displays: Evidence from single face and multi-facial stimuli

This study examined the contribution of social anxiety to the evaluation of emotional facial stimuli, while controlling for the gender of participants and stimuli. Participants (n=63) completed two tasks: a single face evaluation task in which they had to evaluate angry versus neutral faces and, a facial crowd evaluation task in which they had to evaluate displays with a varying number of neutral and angry faces. In each task, participants had to evaluate the stimuli with respect to (a) the degree of disapproval expressed by the single face/crowd, and (b) the perceived difficulty of interacting with the face/crowd (emotional cost). Consistent with earlier studies, results showed that social anxiety modulated the evaluation of single faces for emotional cost, but not for disapproval ratings. In contrast, the evaluation of facial crowds was modulated by social anxiety on both ratings.

Early information processing biases in social anxiety

Considerable controversy persists regarding the nature of threat-related attention biases in social anxiety. Previous studies have not considered how variations in the temporal and energetic dimensions of affective stimulus delivery interact with anxiety-related individual differences to predict biased attention. We administered a visual dot-probe task, using faces that varied in affective intensity (mild, moderate, strong) and presentation rate (100, 500, 1,250 ms) to a selected sample. The high, compared to the low, socially anxious group showed vigilance towards angry faces and emotionally ambiguous faces more generally during rapid (100 ms) presentations. By 1,250 ms, there was only a non-specific motor slowing associated with angry faces in the high socially anxious group. Findings suggest the importance of considering both chronometric and energetic dimensions of affective stimuli when examining anxiety-related attention biases. Future studies should consider using designs that more closely replicate aspects of real-world interaction to study processing biases in socially anxious populations.

Absence of a positive bias in social anxiety: The application of a directed forgetting paradigm

The present study used a directed forgetting paradigm to investigate whether socially anxious individuals show a memory bias for social information. Socially anxious and non-anxious participants viewed three types of words: socially negative, socially positive, and neutral. Each word was presented on a computer screen and was followed by a cue instructing participants to either remember or forget the word. A free recall test and a recognition test were then administered by asking participants to recall and recognize both “to-be-remembered” and “to-be-forgotten” words. When compared to non-anxious participants, socially anxious participants showed a greater directed forgetting effect for socially positive words in the free recall test, indicating that socially anxious individuals more easily forget socially positive words than do non-anxious individuals. This result suggests that socially anxious individuals lack the positive bias (i.e., difficulty in forgetting socially positive information) displayed by non-anxious individuals.

Post-event processing and memory bias for performance feedback in social anxiety

Despite predictions following from cognitive theories of anxiety, evidence for memory biases in social anxiety has been mixed. This study extends previous research by using stimuli relevant to participants’ concerns and allowing time for post-event processing. Participants high ( n = 42) or low ( n = 39) in social anxiety symptoms gave speeches and received standardized feedback on their and a confederate's performance. Participants then took recognition and recall tests for the feedback immediately after it was given and after a two-day delay. Results showed no recall biases. However, the hypothesized recognition biases were found: the high social anxiety group remembered the confederate's feedback more positively than their own, remembered their negative feedback as worse than the low group, and diminished positive feedback over time. Moreover, post-event processing mediated the relationship between social anxiety and memory for negative feedback. Results suggest that biased recognition of social feedback is linked to social anxiety.

Social anxiety in childhood: bridging developmental and clinical perspectives.

In this introductory chapter, guided by developmental psychopathology and developmental science as overarching integrative theoretical frameworks, the authors define three constructs related to social anxiety in childhood (behavioral inhibition, anxious solitude/withdrawal, and social anxiety disorder) and analyze commonalities and differences in the content and assessment of these constructs. They then highlight controversies between developmental and clinical approaches to the definition of these constructs, the role of biology in social anxiety, age of onset of social anxiety, information processing biases in social anxiety, heterogeneity in the social and emotional adjustment of socially anxious children, and targets of intervention for childhood social anxiety.

Memory for Physiological Feedback in Social Anxiety Disorder: The Role of Fear of Bodily Sensations

This study examined whether individuals with social anxiety disorder have a memory bias for bodily sensations associated with anxiety. Using a false feedback paradigm, 33 individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and 34 non-anxious control (NAC) participants completed a performance task while monitoring stimuli they were told provided feedback on whether their physiological response was changing or stable. On measures of free recall and recognition for their feedback no differences were found between SAD and NAC individuals. However, among SAD participants only, fear of bodily sensations was significantly associated with enhanced memory for stimuli associated with physiological responses. Results suggest that research and treatment may benefit from considering not only fear of social situations, but also the focus of those fears, such as bodily sensations, when examining memory biases in social anxiety.

Negative Interpretation Bias Mediates the Effect of Social Anxiety on State Anxiety.

Cognitive models of social anxiety predict that interpretation bias mediates the relationship between level of social anxiety and state anxiety in response to social-evaluative threat. We tested this prediction in 67 socially anxious undergraduates. Participants completed self-report measures of social anxiety and interpretation bias, and two days later they completed an impromptu speech. Mediational analyses supported the hypothesis that interpretation bias mediates the effect of social anxiety on state anxiety in response to the speech. This relationship was specific to negative interpretation of ambiguous social scenarios. The current findings support cognitive models of social phobia and add to the empirical base supporting the role of interpretation bias in social anxiety.

Interpretation in Social Anxiety: When Meaning Precedes Ambiguity.

Cognitive models of anxiety posit that negative beliefs influence socially anxious individuals' interpretation of ambiguous social cues. However, paradigms used to assess interpretation bias in social anxiety have not addressed such beliefs. Furthermore, studies have assessed interpretation with either self-report or reaction time paradigms, rather than using both methods. In the current study, socially anxious and non-anxious participants completed the Word Sentence Association Paradigm (WSAP). In the WSAP, participants decide whether or not a word (implying a threat or benign interpretation) is related to an ambiguous sentence. Threat or benign meanings preceded the ambiguity in order to examine the influence of positive and negative beliefs on interpretation of ambiguous information. The WSAP results in two types of interpretation indices: (1) response latency to make relatedness decisions for threat and benign interpretations, and (2) endorsement rates of the relatedness of threat and benign interpretations to ambiguous sentences. Results revealed a threat interpretation bias and a lack of a benign interpretation bias in both reaction time and self-report data. Threat and benign biases were not strongly correlated. These findings support the distinction between threat and benign interpretation biases.

Interpretation bias in social anxiety as detected by event-related brain potentials.

Little is known about psychophysiological correlates of interpretation bias in social anxiety. To address this issue, the authors measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in high and low socially anxious individuals during a task wherein ambiguous scenarios were resolved with either a positive or negative ending. Specifically, the authors examined modulations of the P600, an ERP that peaks approximately 600 ms following stimulus onset and indexes violations of expectancy. Low-anxious individuals were characterized by an increased P600 to negative in comparison with positive sentence endings, suggesting a positive interpretation bias. In contrast, the high-anxious group evidenced equivalent P600 magnitude for negative and positive sentence endings, suggesting a lack of positive interpretation bias. Similar, but less reliable results emerged in earlier time windows, that is, 200-500 ms poststimulus. Reaction time, occurring around 900 ms poststimulus, failed to show a reliable interpretation bias. Results suggest that ERPs can detect interpretation biases in social anxiety before the emission of behavioral responses.

Biases in interpretation and memory in generalized social phobia.

Two experiments examined the link between interpretation and memory in individuals diagnosed with Generalized Social Phobia (GSP). In Experiment 1, GSP and control participants generated continuations for nonsocial and ambiguous social scenarios. GSP participants produced more socially anxious and negative continuations for the social scenarios than did the controls. On the subsequent test of recalling the social scenarios, intrusion errors that shared meaning with the original continuations were made more frequently by the GSP group, producing false recall with emotionally negative features. To examine whether nonanxious individuals would also produce such errors if given emotional interpretations, in Experiment 2 the authors asked university students to read the scenarios plus endings produced by GSP participants in Experiment 1. The students either constructed vivid mental images of themselves as the main characters or thought about whether the endings provided closure. Low-anxious students in the closure condition produced fewer ending-based intrusions in recalling the social scenarios than did students in the other 3 conditions. Results illustrate the importance of examining the nature of source-monitoring errors in investigations of memory biases in social anxiety.

Continual training of attentional bias in social anxiety

Using the dot-probe paradigm, it has been shown that high social anxiety is associated with an attentional bias toward negative information. In the present study, individuals with high social anxiety were divided into two groups randomly. One group was the attentional bias training group (Group T), and the other was the control group (Group C). For Group T, 7 days’ continuous training of attentional bias was conducted using the dot-probe paradigm to make socially anxious individuals focus more on positive face pictures. The results showed that the training was effective in changing attentional bias in Group T. Scores of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) in Group T were reduced compared to Group C, while the scores of Social Phobia Scale (SPS) and scores of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) showed no difference between the two groups, which suggested a limited reduction of social anxiety.

Attentional biases in social anxiety: An investigation using the inattentional blindness paradigm

One line of research has examined attentional bias as a potential maintenance factor in social anxiety using cognitive experiment paradigms. The present study sought to examine the utility of the inattentional blindness ( IB) paradigm for assessing attentional bias in social anxiety. Unlike other existing paradigms such as the emotional Stroop or dot-probe tasks, the IB paradigm has the advantage of eliminating the individual's expectation and intention to search for social cues, which would reduce strategic or effortful responses. Two independent experiments were conducted using college students scoring high or low on the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale. In both Experiments 1 and 2, participants were randomized to one of three IB experiment conditions, in which a positive face, a negative face, or a neutral item was unexpectedly presented, in the presence/absence of a bogus-speech threat. The overall pattern of our data suggests the presence of hypervigilant attentional processing in social anxiety. The IB paradigm appears to be a useful addition to existing experiment paradigms for investigating attentional bias in social anxiety and perhaps other psychopathology.

Face processing biases in social anxiety: An electrophysiological study

Studies of information processing biases in social anxiety suggest abnormal processing of negative and positive social stimuli. To further investigate these biases, behavioral performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured, while high- and low-socially anxious individuals performed a modified version of the Erikson flanker task comprised of negative and positive facial expressions. While no group differences emerged on behavioral measures, ERP results revealed the presence of a negative face bias in socially anxious subjects as indexed by the parietally maximal attention- and memory-related P3/late positive potential. Additionally, non-anxious subjects evidenced the presence of a positive face bias as reflected in the centrally maximal early attention- and emotion-modulated P2 and the frontally maximal response monitoring-related correct response negativity. These results demonstrate the sensitivity of different processing stages to different biases in high- versus low-socially anxious individuals that may prove important in advancing models of anxious pathology.