Attentional mechanisms of social perception are biased in social phobia.
Attentional mechanisms of social perception are biased in social phobia.
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DOI：
10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.04.004
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发表时间：
2016-05
影响因子：
10.3
通讯作者：
Gamer M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Boll S;Bartholomaeus M;Peter U;Lupke U;Gamer M
社交恐惧症患者对情绪面孔的眼睛表现出高度警惕。这种高度警觉在反射性注意定向中表现得很明显。在社交恐惧症中，对与诊断相关的面部线索的探索没有受到影响。社交恐惧症患者表现出凝视跟随延迟。以前关于社交恐惧症的研究报告说，人们对社交威胁线索的警觉性提高了，但也避免了与社交相关的刺激，如眼睛凝视。本研究的主要目的是通过社交恐惧症患者面部特征扫描的异常来检验与社交线索感知相关的注意机制。在两个新的实验范式中，比较了年龄、性别和教育程度匹配的社交恐惧症患者和健康对照组对面部线索的凝视行为。第一个实验是情绪分类范式，它允许区分反射性注意从持续注意到与诊断相关的面部特征。在第二个实验中，通过凝视线索范式评估了通过凝视方向进行的注意定向，在凝视线索范式中，非预测性的凝视线索将注意力转移到或远离随后呈现的目标。我们发现，与对照组相比，患者在情绪分类范式中条件性地将他们的注意力更频繁地定向到情绪面孔的眼睛上。这种对眼睛区域的初始多警觉是在非常早期的注意阶段观察到的，当面孔呈现150ms时，这种多警觉状态一直持续到面部刺激出现3分钟后。此外，在社交恐惧症患者中观察到了眼睛注视方向的延迟注意定向，这表明患者和对照组的眼睛注视加工过程存在差异。我们的发现表明，社交恐惧症早期注意探索社交线索的基本机制是有偏见的，可能有助于社交恐惧症的发展和维持。
Patients with social phobia show hypervigilance for the eyes of emotional faces. This hypervigilance is evident in reflexive attentional orienting. Exploration of diagnostically relevant facial cues is not impaired in social phobia. Patients with social phobia demonstrate delayed gaze-following. Previous studies of social phobia have reported an increased vigilance to social threat cues but also an avoidance of socially relevant stimuli such as eye gaze. The primary aim of this study was to examine attentional mechanisms relevant for perceiving social cues by means of abnormalities in scanning of facial features in patients with social phobia. In two novel experimental paradigms, patients with social phobia and healthy controls matched on age, gender and education were compared regarding their gazing behavior towards facial cues. The first experiment was an emotion classification paradigm which allowed for differentiating reflexive attentional shifts from sustained attention towards diagnostically relevant facial features. In the second experiment, attentional orienting by gaze direction was assessed in a gaze-cueing paradigm in which non-predictive gaze cues shifted attention towards or away from subsequently presented targets. We found that patients as compared to controls reflexively oriented their attention more frequently towards the eyes of emotional faces in the emotion classification paradigm. This initial hypervigilance for the eye region was observed at very early attentional stages when faces were presented for 150 ms, and persisted when facial stimuli were shown for 3 s. Moreover, a delayed attentional orienting into the direction of eye gaze was observed in individuals with social phobia suggesting a differential time course of eye gaze processing in patients and controls. Our findings suggest that basic mechanisms of early attentional exploration of social cues are biased in social phobia and might contribute to the development and maintenance of the disorder.