Attentional biases in social phobia: Utilizing eye movement data

描述(由申请人提供)：社交恐惧症的特征是对负面评价的夸大恐惧，这会导致实质性的干扰和痛苦(APA，1994)，估计影响到大约1500万美国人(Kessler等人，1994)。此外，社交恐惧症与巨大的个人和社会成本有关(即人际关系困难、工作效率下降；Coles&Horng，2006)。令人鼓舞的是，已经建立了模型，概述了可能维持这种紊乱的因素。例如，Rapee和Heimberg(1997)提出社交恐惧症与对威胁线索的优先注意有关。鉴于这一模型的重要性，在过去的十年里，人们投入了大量的努力来测试这些对威胁的注意偏差是否存在。不幸的是，经验证据喜忧参半，一些研究表明对威胁线索保持警惕(例如，Mogg等人，2004年)，但其他研究发现了避免威胁的证据(例如，Mansell等人，1999年)。幸运的是，眼球运动数据的收集为解决这场争论提供了持续测量注意偏差的时间进程和性质的方法。例如，眼球运动数据将揭示参与者随着时间的推移关注哪里，以及他们在观看情感表情时关注的面部特征。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Social phobia is characterized by an exaggerated fear of negative evaluation that results in substantial interference and distress (APA, 1994), and is estimated to affect approximately 15 million Americans (Kessler et al., 1994). Further, social phobia is associated with significant personal and societal costs (i.e., interpersonal difficulties, decreased work productivity; Coles & Horng, 2006). Encouragingly, models have been developed outlining factors that are likely to maintain this disorder. For example, Rapee and Heimberg (1997) have proposed that social phobia is associated with preferential attention to threat cues. Given the importance of this model, over the past decade extensive efforts have been devoted to testing whether these attentional biases to threat exist. Unfortunately the empirical evidence is mixed, with some research demonstrating vigilance to threat cues (e.g., Mogg et al., 2004), but other studies finding evidence for avoidance of threat (e.g., Mansell et al., 1999). Fortunately, collection of eye-movement data holds promise for resolving this debate by providing a continuous measurement of the time-course and nature of attentional biases. For example, eye-movement data will reveal where participants attend over time and what facial features they focus on when viewing emotional expressions.