Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Cologne, Germany; Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Giessen, Germany.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2014 Mar;45(1):39-45. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2013.07.007. Epub 2013 Aug 1.
Social phobia is characterized by avoidance of feared social situations. Although avoidance is a central feature of social anxiety, few studies have examined avoidance learning.
We used a probabilistic instrumental learning paradigm where participants had to learn by trial and error which response led to the disappearance of a neutral or angry face. 20 high socially anxious and 20 non-socially anxious individuals with an average level of social anxiety learned to avoid an angry or a neutral face by choosing one of two cues. Each of the cues led to the disappearance of the face either with high or low reinforcement probability.
Groups learned to choose the more effective cue across trials and did not differ with regard to self-report valence, arousal for the faces or the a posteriori estimated reinforcement probability for both cues. High socially anxious individuals as compared to the controls chose the high probability cue significantly more often and were slower particularly when the neutral face could be avoided. Notably, HSA engaged in more avoidance responding to the neutral as compared to the angry face early on during the experiment.
Due to the experimental design, the observed avoidance behavior most likely reflects the motivation for avoidance rather than contingency learning per se.
In social anxiety, neutral faces might be processed as ambiguous social cues and strongly motivate avoidance behavior.
社交恐惧症的特征是避免恐惧的社交情境。尽管回避是社交焦虑的核心特征，但很少有研究检查回避学习。
我们使用了一种概率性工具学习范式，参与者必须通过试错来学习哪种反应会导致中性或愤怒面孔的消失。20 名高社交焦虑症患者和 20 名非社交焦虑症患者（平均社交焦虑水平）通过选择两个线索之一来学习避免愤怒或中性面孔。每个线索都会以高或低的强化概率导致面孔消失。
两组参与者都学会了在试验中选择更有效的线索，并且在自我报告的效价、面孔的唤醒程度或两个线索的后验估计强化概率方面没有差异。与对照组相比，高社交焦虑症患者选择高概率线索的频率明显更高，特别是在可以避免中性面孔时，反应速度更慢。值得注意的是，与愤怒面孔相比，高社交焦虑症患者在实验早期更倾向于对中性面孔进行更多的回避反应。
由于实验设计，观察到的回避行为很可能反映了回避的动机，而不是回避学习本身。
在社交焦虑症中，中性面孔可能被视为模糊的社交线索，并强烈激发回避行为。
