Attentional Bias To Happy And Contemptuous Faces In Non-clinical Social Anxiety Individuals

Individuals with social anxiety tend to prioritize the processing of threat-related information,and have a bias to threatening stimuli.In this study,we investigated the attentional bias to happy and contemptuous faces with different gaze directions in non-clinical social anxiety individuals,and used eye-movement techniques to explore the eye movement characteristics during attention processing.The study consisted of three studies involving five experiments.Study 1 used the dot-probe task to explore the attention bias of non-clinical social anxiety subjects to contemptuous faces,including experiment 1 and experiment 2.In experiment 1,the contemptuous face with direct gaze was investigated,while in experiment 2,the contemptuous face with averted gaze was investigated.We also investigated the gender differences In experiment 1.In second study,we investigated the attention bias of the non-clinical social anxiety subjects,including the experimental three and the experimental four,respectively,to happy face with direct gaze and happy face with averted gaze.In third study,we investigated the eye movement characteristics of the non-clinical social anxiety subjects during attention processing by analyzing the fixation duration and the number of eye fixations for happy and contemptuous faces with different gaze directions.From the experimental results,the following conclusions are drawn:1)Compared with the neutral faces,non-clinical social anxiety individuals preferred to pay attention to the contemptuous faces with direct gaze,that is,negative attentional bias.2)Negative attentional bias of direct contemptuous faces was only found in female subjects with high social anxiety level.Male subjects did not have this evidence,that is,there was gender difference in negative attentional bias.3)Only when contemptuous faces combined with direct gaze,high social anxiety individuals will show attention bias,contemptuous faces with averted gaze will not cause this phenomenon.4)Compared with the neutral faces,the low social anxiety subjects preferred to pay attention to the happy faces,there was positive attentional bias,but the high social anxiety individuals had the processing deficiency of positive faces.5)Compared with the low social anxiety individuals,the high social anxiety individuals have a general avoidance tendency of the eye area,which is characterized by relatively few eye fixations and short fixation duration,and this avoidance tendency is mainly manifested when viewing contemptuous face with direct gaze,contemptuous face with averted gaze and happy face with averted gaze.6)In contrast to happy face,high social anxiety individuals are more likely to avoid viewing the the eye area of contemptuous faces.This study investigated the attention bias of non-clinical social anxiety individuals to facial expressions with different gaze directions,and explored the eye movement characteristics during the attention processing by eye movement technique.On the one hand,this study will help to explore the cause of social anxiety,and has potential significance for clinical diagnosis;on the other hand,the study will help to improve the effectiveness of the training program based on this.