Kamhout Sarah, Olivier Joshua M, Morris Jarom, Brimhall Hayden R, Black Braeden L, Gabrielsen Terisa P, South Mikle, Lundwall Rebecca A, Nielsen Jared A
Neuroscience Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States.
Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Jun 28;14:1181797. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1181797. eCollection 2023.
Social anxiousness is a pervasive symptom in both social anxiety disorder and autism spectrum conditions. Binocular rivalry, which occurs when different images are presented to each eye, has been used to explore how visual and cognitive processing differs across various clinical diagnoses. Previous studies have separately explored whether individuals with autism or anxiety experience binocular rivalry in ways that are different from neurotypical individuals.
We applied rivalry paradigms that are similar to those used in previous studies of autism and general anxiety to individuals experiencing symptoms of social anxiousness at clinical or subclinical levels. We also incorporated rivalrous stimuli featuring neutral and emotional facial valances to explore potential overlap of social processing components in social anxiety and autism.
We hypothesized that higher levels of social anxiousness would increase binocular rivalry switch rates and that higher levels of autistic traits would decrease switch rates. However, stimulus condition did not affect switch rates in either diagnostic group, and switch rate was not significantly predictive of dimensional measures of either autism or social anxiety.
This may suggest a common mechanism for atypical visual cognition styles previously associated with social anxiety and autism. Alternatively, differences in switch rates may only emerge at higher trait levels than reported by the participants in our studies. Furthermore, these findings may be influenced by sex differences in our unique sample.
社交焦虑是社交焦虑障碍和自闭症谱系障碍中普遍存在的症状。双眼竞争是指当给每只眼睛呈现不同图像时发生的现象，已被用于探索不同临床诊断中视觉和认知加工的差异。先前的研究分别探讨了自闭症或焦虑症患者体验双眼竞争的方式是否与神经典型个体不同。
我们将与先前自闭症和广泛性焦虑症研究中使用的类似竞争范式应用于临床或亚临床水平有社交焦虑症状的个体。我们还纳入了具有中性和情绪化面部表情效价的竞争刺激，以探索社交焦虑和自闭症中社交加工成分的潜在重叠。
我们假设较高水平的社交焦虑会增加双眼竞争的转换率，而较高水平的自闭症特征会降低转换率。然而，刺激条件在两个诊断组中均未影响转换率，且转换率对自闭症或社交焦虑的维度测量均无显著预测作用。
这可能表明先前与社交焦虑和自闭症相关的非典型视觉认知风格存在共同机制。或者，转换率的差异可能仅在比我们研究中的参与者所报告的更高特质水平上才会出现。此外，这些发现可能受到我们独特样本中性别差异的影响。
