Impaired processing of social context cues in socially anxious individuals

描述（由申请人提供）：社交焦虑很普遍，估计一生中影响7%至13%的人口。它也常常具有很大的破坏性，影响福祉并造成许多社会和经济负担。总的来说，拟议的研究旨在进一步了解社交焦虑在行为和神经生物学水平上的分析，以加强治疗，并帮助为更好的预防和康复铺平道路。该研究将揭示社交焦虑的基本感知和情感偏见，其结果将能够用于更好的临床干预。先前的研究表明，社交焦虑的个体对威胁性的社会线索（如愤怒的脸）表现出异常的注意偏向。对威胁性社会线索的高度关注可能会损害社交焦虑个体处理重要情境线索（例如，身体的非愤怒线索）的能力，这些线索需要用来适当地感知他人的情绪。如果这是真的，那么对情境线索的利用不足可能会导致社交焦虑的个体对他人的情绪产生错误的认知和情感反应。本研究的具体目的是：(a)研究情境线索如何影响社交焦虑中情绪面孔的知觉判断；(b)研究情境线索如何影响社交焦虑中对情绪化面孔的情感反应；(c)确定这些情境影响的神经基础。这将在6项研究中进行检验。前两项研究将检验社交焦虑高（相对低）的个体是否在将情绪身体语境（研究1A）和语义语境（研究1B）融入他们对面部情绪的感知方面表现出障碍，并使用情绪分类任务进行评估。如果社交焦虑的个体在将情境线索融入他们对情绪面孔的感知方面表现出障碍，那么这些面孔很可能引发错误的情感反应。接下来的两项研究将使用情感启动范式来测试高社交焦虑个体（相对于低社交焦虑个体）是否对带有情绪身体语境（研究2A）和语义语境（研究2B）的情绪面孔表现出错误的情感反应。最后，功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）将用于识别社交焦虑个体在情境中——对情绪面孔做出反应时的线索处理——损伤的神经基础，包括身体情境（研究3A）和语义情境（研究3B）。在这6项研究中，我们假设对情绪面孔的感知、情感和神经反应会反映低社交焦虑个体对情境线索的利用，但这种利用会在高社交焦虑个体中中断。这些结果将对理解和治疗社交焦虑具有重要意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Social anxiety is prevalent, estimated to affect 7% to 13% of the population during the lifetime. It is also often very disruptive, affecting well-being and bearing numerous social and economic burdens. Broadly, the proposed research seeks to further an understanding of social anxiety at behavioral and neurobiological levels of analysis for enhancing treatment and helping pave the way for better prevention and recovery. The proposed research will shed light on basic perceptual and affective biases in social anxiety, and the results will be able to be used for better clinical intervention. Prior research suggests that socially anxious individuals show an abnormal attentional bias toward threatening social cues, such as an angry face. It is possible that a heightened attention to threatening social cues could impair socially anxious individuals' ability to process important context cues (e.g., non-angry cues of the body) that need to be used to appropriately perceive other's emotions. If true, an underutilization of context cues might lead socially anxious individuals to have misguided perceptions of and affective reactions to others' emotions. The specific aims of the proposed research are to (a) examine how context cues influence perceptual judgments of emotional faces in social anxiety; (b) examine how context cues influence affective reactions to emotional faces in social anxiety; and (c) identify the neural basis of these contextual influences. This will be examined in 6 studies. The first 2 studies will examine whether individuals high in social anxiety (relative to low) show impairments in incorporating emotional body contexts (Study 1A) and semantic contexts (Study 1B) into their perceptions of facial emotion, assessed using an emotion-categorization task. If socially anxious individuals show impairments in incorporating context cues into their perceptions of emotional faces, the faces are likely to trigger misguided affective responses. The following 2 studies will use an affective priming paradigm to test whether individuals high in social anxiety (relative to low) show misguided affective responses to emotional faces accompanied by emotional body contexts (Study 2A) and semantic contexts (Study 2B). Lastly, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to identify the neural basis of socially anxious individuals' impairments in context- cue processing when reacting to emotional faces, both in body contexts (Study 3A) and semantic contexts (Study 3B). Across the 6 studies, it is hypothesized that perceptual, affective, and neural responses to emotional faces will reflect utilization of context cues in individuals low in social anxiety, but that this utilization will be disrupted in individuals high in social anxiety. These results will have important implications for understanding and treating social anxiety. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research seeks to further an understanding of social anxiety at behavioral and neurobiological levels of analysis for enhancing treatment and helping pave the way for better prevention and recovery. This research will shed light on basic perceptual and affective biases in social anxiety. The results will have important implications for the understanding and clinical intervention of social anxiety.