Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany ; LEAD Graduate School, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Aug 4;8:580. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00580. eCollection 2014.
Socially anxious individuals have been shown to exhibit altered processing of facial affect, especially expressions signaling threat. Enhanced unaware processing has been suggested an important mechanism which may give rise to anxious conscious cognition and behavior. This study investigated whether individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) are perceptually more vulnerable to the biasing effects of subliminal threat cues compared to healthy controls. In a perceptual judgment task, 23 SAD and 23 matched control participants were asked to rate the affective valence of parametrically manipulated affective expressions ranging from neutral to angry. Each trial was preceded by subliminal presentation of an angry/neutral cue. The SAD group tended to rate target faces as "angry" when the preceding subliminal stimulus was angry vs. neutral, while healthy participants were not biased by the subliminal stimulus presentation. The perceptual bias in SAD was also associated with higher reaction time latencies in the subliminal angry cue condition. The results provide further support for enhanced unconscious threat processing in SAD individuals. The implications for etiology, maintenance, and treatment of SAD are discussed.
社交焦虑个体被发现对面部情绪的加工存在改变，特别是对威胁信号的表情。增强的无意识加工被认为是一种重要的机制，可能导致焦虑的意识认知和行为。本研究旨在探讨与健康对照组相比，社交焦虑障碍（SAD）个体是否在感知上更容易受到阈下威胁线索的影响。在一项知觉判断任务中，23 名 SAD 患者和 23 名匹配的对照组参与者被要求对从中性到愤怒的参数化情绪表达进行情感效价的评分。每个试验前都呈现阈下的愤怒/中性线索。当先前的阈下刺激是愤怒时，SAD 组倾向于将目标面孔评为“愤怒”，而健康参与者则不受阈下刺激呈现的影响。SAD 中的知觉偏差也与阈下愤怒线索条件下的反应时潜伏期较长有关。研究结果进一步支持 SAD 个体中增强的无意识威胁加工。讨论了 SAD 的病因、维持和治疗的意义。
