University of California Los Angeles, Department of Psychology, USA.
University of California San Francisco, Department of Psychiatry, USA.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2020 Sep;68:101529. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2019.101529. Epub 2019 Nov 11.
Difficulty disengaging attention from threat has been observed in some anxious samples, but the evidence to date is mixed. The current study examines temporal trends in attention disengagement and compares this construct across multiple forms of social threat.
Participants (85 adults with a principal diagnosis of social anxiety disorder) completed a spatial cueing task with four image categories (angry faces, disapproving faces, neutral faces, neutral objects). Attention disengagement was assessed via reaction time (RT) over 256 trials.
Participants with greater social anxiety exhibited an initial delay in attention disengagement from disapproving faces that habituated over the course of the task. RTs to angry and neutral stimuli did not differ as a function of social anxiety.
The current task only allowed for examining speed of attention disengagement, and thus we were unable to compare our results to trajectories of speed at which participants orient towards threat. Additionally, disapproving facial images were created for this paradigm and may benefit from further validation.
Findings suggest that social anxiety is associated with an initial delay in attention disengagement from social threat that resolves over the course of repeated exposures to such stimuli. Treatment implications are discussed.
在一些焦虑样本中观察到难以将注意力从威胁中转移出来，但迄今为止的证据喜忧参半。本研究考察了注意力脱离的时间趋势，并比较了多种形式的社交威胁下的这种结构。
参与者（85 名社交焦虑障碍的主要诊断成年人）完成了一个空间线索任务，其中有四个图像类别（愤怒的面孔、不赞成的面孔、中性的面孔、中性的物体）。通过 256 次试验的反应时间 (RT) 来评估注意力脱离。
社交焦虑程度较高的参与者在从不赞成的面孔中最初出现注意力脱离延迟，这种延迟在任务过程中逐渐习惯。愤怒和中性刺激的 RT 不随社交焦虑而变化。
当前任务仅允许检查注意力脱离的速度，因此我们无法将我们的结果与参与者对威胁的定向速度的轨迹进行比较。此外，不赞成的面部图像是为该范式创建的，可能需要进一步验证。
研究结果表明，社交焦虑与从社交威胁中最初出现的注意力脱离延迟有关，这种延迟在反复暴露于此类刺激时会逐渐消失。讨论了治疗意义。
