Now you see it, now you don't: Relevance of threat enhances social anxiety-linked attentional bias to angry faces, but relevance of neutral information attenuates it

Abstract

Temporary goals modulate attention to threat. We examined whether attentional bias to angry faces differs depending on whether a temporary background goal is neutral, or threat related, whilst also measuring social anxiety. Participants performed a dot probe task combined with a separate task that induced a temporary goal. Depending on the phase in this goal task, the goal made angry faces or neutral stimuli (i.e., houses) relevant. The dot probe task measured attention to combinations of angry faces, neutral but goal-relevant stimuli (i.e., houses), and neutral control stimuli. Attention was allocated to angry faces when an angry goal was active. This was more pronounced for people scoring high on social phobia. The neutral goal attenuated attention to angry faces and effects of social phobia were no longer apparent. These findings suggest that individual differences in social anxiety interact with current and temporary goals to affect attentional processes.

Fig 1. Schematic overview of a trial of the combined dot probe and goal task.

The first three boxes depict the dot probe task in which the presentation of the cues was followed by a probe (black square) which had to be localized. Cues and goal stimuli were photographs in the study. The last two boxes display the goal task in which the presentation of a single stimulus was followed by the appearance of a question mark. Participants had to react to the question mark by pressing the spacebar when the single stimulus presented had been goal stimulus. A goal trial only followed a trial in the dot probe task from time to time.

Fig 2. Attentional bias indices for the two trial types presenting angry faces.

Angry faces were presented in comparison to houses or control car stimuli in house goal and angry face goal phases. Positive attentional bias indices indicate attention towards angry faces, negative attentional bias indices attention towards houses or control car stimuli. Error bars represent standard errors of mean.

Fig 3. Attentional bias indices for trials presenting houses.

Houses were presented in comparison to control car stimuli in house goal and angry face goal phases. Positive attentional bias indices indicate attention towards houses, negative attentional bias indices attention towards control car stimuli. Error bars represent standard errors of mean.

Fig 4. Association between social anxiety and attention to angry faces.

Scatterplot showing the association between the SPIN score (y-axis) and attention bias to angry faces across the trials showing angry faces (in ms, x-axis) in the phases where angry phases were goal relevant.