Ahrens Lea M, Mühlberger Andreas, Pauli Paul, Wieser Matthias J
Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, and Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, and Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2015 Jul;10(7):929-37. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu140. Epub 2014 Oct 22.
In search of causative factors of social anxiety disorder (SAD), classical conditioning has been discussed as a potential trigger mechanism for many years. Recent findings suggest that the social relevance of the unconditioned stimulus (US) might play a major role in learning theories of SAD. Thus, this study applied a social conditioning paradigm with disorder-relevant US to examine the electrocortical correlates of affective learning. Twenty-four high socially anxious (HSA) and 23 age- and gender-matched low socially anxious (LSA) subjects were conditioned to 3 different faces flickering at a frequency of 15 Hz which were paired with auditory insults, compliments or neutral comments (US). The face-evoked electrocortical response was measured via steady-state visually evoked potentials and subjective measures of valence and arousal were obtained. Results revealed a significant interaction of social anxiety and conditioning, with LSA showing highest cortical activity to faces paired with insults and lowest activity to faces paired with compliments, while HSA did not differentiate between faces. No group differences were discovered in the affective ratings. The findings indicate a potentially impaired ability of HSA to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant social stimuli, which may constitute a perpetuating factor of SAD.
为寻找社交焦虑障碍（SAD）的致病因素，经典条件作用作为一种潜在的触发机制已被讨论多年。最近的研究结果表明，无条件刺激（US）的社会相关性可能在SAD的学习理论中起主要作用。因此，本研究应用了一种与障碍相关的US的社会条件作用范式，以检验情感学习的皮层电相关物。24名高社交焦虑（HSA）者和23名年龄及性别匹配的低社交焦虑（LSA）者被条件化，使其对以15赫兹频率闪烁的3张不同面孔产生反应，这些面孔分别与听觉侮辱、赞扬或中性评论（US）配对。通过稳态视觉诱发电位测量面孔诱发的皮层电反应，并获得效价和唤醒的主观测量值。结果显示社交焦虑与条件作用之间存在显著交互作用，LSA对与侮辱配对的面孔表现出最高的皮层活动，对与赞扬配对的面孔表现出最低的活动，而HSA对面孔没有区分。在情感评分中未发现组间差异。研究结果表明，HSA区分相关和不相关社会刺激的能力可能受损，这可能是SAD的一个持续因素。
