Mansell Warren, Clark David M, Ehlers Anke
Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, University of London, SE5 8AF, London, UK.
Behav Res Ther. 2003 May;41(5):555-72. doi: 10.1016/s0005-7967(02)00029-3.
Several cognitive models propose that social anxiety is associated with increased self-focused attention. Indirect evidence for this hypothesis has been provided by questionnaire studies, and by cognitive psychology paradigms that have demonstrated reduced processing of external information during feared social-evaluative situations. However, no studies have simultaneously measured on-line attention to internal and external events. A probe detection task that aimed to measure the balance of attention between internal and external stimuli was developed. High and low socially anxious individuals were instructed to detect two probes. The external probe was superimposed on pictures of faces (happy, neutral, angry) or household objects that were presented on a VDU. The 'internal' probe was a pulse to the finger which participants were led to believe represented significant changes in their physiology. Compared to low speech anxious individuals, high speech anxious individuals showed an internal attentional bias, that was specific to conditions of social-evaluative threat.
几种认知模型提出，社交焦虑与自我关注的增加有关。问卷调查研究以及认知心理学范式为这一假设提供了间接证据，这些研究和范式表明，在令人恐惧的社交评价情境中，对外界信息的处理会减少。然而，尚无研究同时测量对内部和外部事件的即时注意力。为此开发了一种探测检测任务，旨在测量内部和外部刺激之间的注意力平衡。指导高社交焦虑个体和低社交焦虑个体检测两种探测信号。外部探测信号叠加在电脑显示器上呈现的面部图片（高兴、中性、愤怒）或家居用品图片上。“内部”探测信号是手指上的一次脉冲，参与者被引导认为这代表了他们生理上的显著变化。与低言语焦虑个体相比，高言语焦虑个体表现出一种内部注意力偏差，这种偏差特定于社交评价威胁的情境。
