Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Mar:50:68-76.
doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.05.008. Epub 2015 May 23.

Attentional control moderates the relationship between social anxiety symptoms and attentional disengagement from threatening information

Charles T Taylor  1 , Karalani Cross  2 , Nader Amir  3
Affiliations

Attentional control moderates the relationship between social anxiety symptoms and attentional disengagement from threatening information

Charles T Taylor et al. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2016 Mar.

Abstract

Background and objectives: Social anxiety is characterized by biased attentional processing of social information. However, heterogeneity of extant findings suggests that it may be informative to elucidate individual difference factors that modulate the processing of emotional information. The current study examined whether individual differences in components of attentional control (AC--shifting and focusing) moderated the link between social anxiety and attentional engagement and disengagement biases for threat-relevant cues.

Methods: Seventy-five undergraduate students completed well-established measures of social anxiety symptoms, AC, and attentional bias for social threat information (modified probe detection task).

Results: Moderation analyses revealed that at low levels of AC-shifting, increased social anxiety was associated with slower disengagement from threat-relevant compared to neutral social cues. In contrast, at high levels of AC-shifting, social anxiety was associated with faster disengagement from threat-relevant compared to neutral stimuli. Individual differences in AC-focusing did not moderate the social anxiety-attentional bias link.

Limitations: Causal inferences cannot be made given the cross-sectional study design. The sample comprised individuals displaying a range of self-reported social anxiety symptoms; thus, generalizability to clinical samples remains to be established. The measurement of AC relied on subjective participant report.

Conclusions: The current findings underscore the importance of AC processes in understanding the nature of attentional bias mechanisms in anxiety.

Keywords: Attentional bias; Attentional control; Disengagement; Engagement; Individual differences; Social anxiety.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
This is an example of a trial in which participants must disengage from the negative stimulus to attend to the letter probe. Initial attention was anchored to the top locus by instructing participants to look at the top picture.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Simple regression slopes of levels of attentional control – shifting (ACS – Shift) predicting disengagement bias for negative stimuli at levels of trait social anxiety (LSAS).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aiken LS, West SG. Multiple regression: testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications; 1991.
    1. Amir N, Elias J, Klumpp H, Przeworski A. Attentional bias to threat in social phobia: facilitated processing of threat or difficulty disengaging attention from threat? Behaviour Research and Therapy. 2003;41(11):1325–1335. doi: 10.1016/S0005-7967(03)00039-1. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Amir N, Najmi S, Bomyea J, Burns M. Disgust and anger in social anxiety. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy. 2010;3(1):3–10. doi: 10.1521/ijct.2010.3.1.3. - DOI
    1. Asmundson GJG, Stein MB. Selective processing of social threat in patients with generalized social phobia: Evaluation using a dot-probe paradigm. Journal of Anxiety Disorders. 1994;8(2):107–117. doi: 10.1016/0887-6185(94)90009-4. - DOI
    1. Bardeen JR, Orcutt HK. Attentional control as a moderator of the relationship between posttraumatic stress symptoms and attentional threat bias. Journal of Anxiety Disorders. 2011;25(8):1008–1018. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.06.009. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types