Kret Mariska E, Stekelenburg Jeroen J, de Gelder Beatrice, Roelofs Karin
Leiden University, Institute of Psychology, The Cognitive Psychology Unit, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), The Netherlands.
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Cognitive Neuropsychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Biol Psychol. 2017 Jan;122:42-50. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.11.016. Epub 2015 Dec 2.
The eye-region conveys important emotional information that we spontaneously attend to. Socially submissive individuals avoid other's gaze which is regarded as avoidance of others' emotional face expressions. But this interpretation ignores the fact that there are other sources of emotional information besides the face. Here we investigate whether gaze-aversion is associated with increased attention to emotional signals from the hands. We used eye-tracking to compare eye-fixations of pre-selected high and low socially anxious students when labeling bodily expressions (Experiment 1) with (non)-matching facial expressions (Experiment 2) and passively viewed (Experiment 3). High compared to low socially anxious individuals attended more to hand-regions. Our findings demonstrate that socially anxious individuals do attend to emotions, albeit to different signals than the eyes and the face. Our findings call for a closer investigation of alternative viewing patterns explaining gaze-avoidance and underscore that other signals besides the eyes and face must be considered to reach conclusions about social anxiety.
眼部区域传达着重要的情感信息，我们会自然而然地予以关注。社交顺从型个体避免与他人目光接触，这被视为对他人情感面部表情的回避。但这种解释忽略了一个事实，即除了面部之外，还有其他情感信息来源。在此，我们研究目光回避是否与对手部情感信号的关注度增加有关。我们使用眼动追踪技术，比较了预先挑选出的社交焦虑程度高和低的学生在对身体表情进行标注时（实验1）、与（不）匹配的面部表情一起时（实验2）以及被动观看时（实验3）的眼动注视情况。与社交焦虑程度低的个体相比，社交焦虑程度高的个体对手部区域的关注度更高。我们的研究结果表明，社交焦虑个体确实会关注情感，尽管关注的是与眼睛和面部不同的信号。我们的研究结果呼吁对解释目光回避的其他观看模式进行更深入的研究，并强调在得出关于社交焦虑的结论时，必须考虑除眼睛和面部之外的其他信号。
