Department of Clinical Psychology, Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University, P.B 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2011 Sep;42(3):355-63. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2011.02.007. Epub 2011 Feb 22.
Scientific evidence is equivocal on whether Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is characterized by a biased negative evaluation of (grouped) facial expressions, even though it is assumed that such a bias plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the disorder. To shed light on the underlying mechanisms of face evaluation in social anxiety, the eye movements of 22 highly socially anxious (SAs) and 21 non-anxious controls (NACs) were recorded while they rated the degree of friendliness of neutral-angry and smiling-angry face combinations. While the Crowd Rating Task data showed no significant differences between SAs and NACs, the resultant eye-movement patterns revealed that SAs, compared to NACs, looked away faster when the face first fixated was angry. Additionally, in SAs the proportion of fixated angry faces was significantly higher than for other expressions. Independent of social anxiety, these fixated angry faces were the best predictor of subsequent affect ratings for either group. Angry faces influence attentional processes such as eye movements in SAs and by doing so reflect biased evaluations. As these processes do not correlate with explicit ratings of faces, however, it remains unclear at what point implicit attentional behaviors lead to anxiety-prone behaviors and the maintenance of SAD. The relevance of these findings is discussed in the light of the current theories.
科学证据对于社交焦虑障碍（SAD）是否以（分组）面部表情的负面偏见评估为特征存在分歧，尽管人们认为这种偏见在疾病的维持中起着至关重要的作用。为了阐明社交焦虑中面部评估的潜在机制，记录了 22 名高度社交焦虑（SA）患者和 21 名非焦虑对照（NAC）的眼动，同时他们对中性愤怒和微笑愤怒面孔组合的友好程度进行了评分。虽然群体评分任务数据显示 SA 和 NAC 之间没有显著差异，但产生的眼动模式表明，与 NAC 相比，当首先注视的面孔是愤怒时，SA 会更快地移开视线。此外，在 SA 中，注视愤怒面孔的比例明显高于其他表情。独立于社交焦虑，这些注视的愤怒面孔是两个组后续情绪评分的最佳预测指标。愤怒的面孔会影响注意力过程，例如 SA 的眼动，从而反映出有偏见的评估。然而，由于这些过程与面孔的明确评分无关，因此尚不清楚内隐注意行为何时会导致焦虑倾向行为和 SAD 的维持。这些发现的相关性将根据当前理论进行讨论。
