Neural Correlates of Impaired Attentional Control in Social Anxiety: an ERP Study

Cognitive models of social anxiety disorder posit that cognitive processes associated with social anxiety, such as self-focused attention, influence behaviors in feared social environments. However, these models are relatively nonspecific about the effects and basic mechanisms of this process. The current study drew from attentional control theory in order to provide specific predictions, namely, that anxiety interferes with processing efficiency, particularly in the executive control processes of inhibition and shifting. The current study tested whether socially anxious individuals demonstrated impaired processing efficiency at the neural and behavioral level, and whether this was exacerbated by a manipulation of self-focused attention. Thirty-two (16 socially anxious, 16 non-anxious controls) subjects completed a mixed-antisaccade task with a circle which appeared around the instructional cue on 20% of trials. Participants were told that this circle indicated elevated heart rate. Eye-movements were measured using horizontal electrooculography, and event-related brain potentials were derived from EEG data collected during the task. Socially anxious individuals reported that the heart rate feedback made them more self-conscious and interfered more with their performance on the task compared to controls. The socially anxious group also demonstrated impaired processing efficiency as indicated by delayed onset of correct saccades compared to controls, but made fewer errors. Additionally, socially anxious individuals had lower P3b amplitude compared to controls, suggesting greater effort in discriminating cues, and later P3b latency for trials on which heart rate feedback was present, suggesting delayed cue categorization. Furthermore, socially anxious individuals had greater CNV negativity compared to controls, suggesting greater recruitment of attentional resources for response preparation, and later onset of this component, suggesting delayed response preparation. These results were as hypothesized and are generally consistent with attentional control theory. The current study supports the applicability of this model for cognitive theories of social anxiety and expands these theories by providing evidence of impaired neural and behavioral functioning in social anxiety, especially as a result of self-focused attention.Department of Psycholog

Selective Attention and Working Memory Maintenance for Threatening Faces in Social Anxiety: An Erp Study

Social anxiety disorder is a common syndrome characterized by excessive fear of negative evaluation in social situations. Cognitive theories (e.g., Clark & McManus, 2002; Heimberg, Brozovich, & Rapee, 2010) suggest that biases in attention play an important role in maintaining social fears. These models posit that socially anxious individuals focus attention on aspects of themselves (e.g., sensations of physiological arousal) and the social environment (e.g., potentially evaluative facial expressions) which indicate risk of negative appraisal by others. However, few studies have used lateralized event-related potentials (ERPs) to evaluate when these biases occur within stages of information processing. The goal of this study was to utilize ERPs (i.e., N2pc and CDA) during a change detection task in order to examine biases in selection (i.e., N2pc amplitude) and maintenance (i.e., CDA amplitude) of attention toward socially threatening faces in socially anxious subjects. Additionally, the effect of self-focused attention on these biases was examined using false heart rate feedback during the task. As hypothesized, socially anxious subjects showed early and sustained biased attention for disgust faces relative to neutral faces, and non-anxious controls did not show this bias. However, controls showed an early bias (N2pc) for disgust faces when heart rate cues were present, whereas socially anxious subjects showed no bias in this condition. Contrary to the hypotheses, controls showed an ipsilateral delay activity after being cued to attend to one hemifield, perhaps indicating active suppression of contralateral distractors. These findings and supplementary data are discussed in light of cognitive models of social anxiety disorder, recent empirical findings, and treatment.Psycholog

Examining a Neural Measure of Attentional Bias to Emotional Faces in Social Anxiety and Depression

Cognitive theories suggest that attentional biases may contribute to both social anxiety and depression, such that attention may be biased to focus on or away from certain information (e.g., rejecting or sad images; Clark & McManus, 2002; Lemoult & Gotlib, 2019). Although research is mixed, recent studies using a neural measure called the N2pc (an event-related potential) has indicated attentional biases in social anxiety. However, little N2pc research has examined depression or co-occurring depression and social anxiety. The current study used electroencephalography to measure the N2pc during a dot-probe task in which images of faces with emotional or neutral expressions competed for attention. Undergraduates (N = 102) completed the task and self-report measures of social anxiety and depression. Hierarchical linear regressions examined the hypotheses that social anxiety would be associated with attentional biases toward both angry and disgust faces and that depression would be associated with biases away from happy faces and toward sad faces. Social anxiety was associated with a more negative N2pc for (i.e. greater bias toward) happy faces (β = -.32, p \u3c .01) when holding depression constant. Depression was only marginally associated with bias toward sad faces (β = -.20, p = .09), given average social anxiety, and the interaction of depression and social anxiety marginally predicted less bias toward sad faces (β = .21, p = .08). The social anxiety bias toward happy faces supports the fear of positive evaluation theory (Weeks et al., 2008). Individuals with social anxiety may rapidly attend to positive evaluation because it signals being pulled further into an anxious situation. The depression bias toward sad faces was marginal but provides some support for the cognitive perspective that attentional vigilance for depressive content influences negative thoughts and mood. This research informs interventions such as attentional bias modification and cognitive-behavioral therapy.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/gradposters2022_sciences/1006/thumbnail.jp

Correction to: A Bifactor Model of the Straightforward Attentional Control Scale (Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, (2020), 42, 1, (127-136), 10.1007/s10862-019-09737-y)

© 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. The Table 2 in the original version of this article contained mistakes. The entries 4 to 12 under the Items column are incorrect. The correct Table 2 is presented at the next page

Understanding the dimensions of post-event processing : applying a bifactor modeling approach to the EPEPQ-15

Social anxiety disorder is maintained in part by rumination about past social experiences, known as post-event processing. The Extended Post-Event Processing Questionnaire (EPEPQ-15) assesses post-event processing as three correlated factors. Competing against this structure is a bifactor model that has not yet been evaluated for the EPEPQ-15. These models were tested for the conventional state version of the EPEPQ-15 and a new trait version in two separate samples (Ns = 327 and 351). In both samples, the fit of the bifactor model was better than that of correlated factor models. Moreover, the results did not support the group factors, indicating that a unidimensional interpretation of the EPEPQ-15 is most appropriate. The general dimension of the EPEPQ-15 was highly correlated with social interaction anxiety, beliefs related to social anxiety, anticipatory processing, and safety behaviors. These results overall suggest post-event processing is best conceptualized as a unitary construct

Ptsd Symptoms And Overt Attention To Contextualized Emotional Faces: Evidence From Eye Tracking

Abnormal patterns of attention to emotional faces and images are proposed by theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and this has been demonstrated empirically. However, few studies have examined how PTSD symptoms are associated with attention to emotional faces in the context of emotional background images. Eye tracking data were collected from seventy-eight undergraduates with a history of experiencing at least one traumatic event as they completed the Contextual Recognition of Affective Faces Task (CRAFT; Milanak and Berenbaum, 2014), which requires subjects to identify the emotion depicted by faces superimposed on an emotional background image. Greater PTSD symptom severity was associated with more time spent looking at background contexts and less time looking at target faces. This is consistent with greater susceptibility to distraction by task-irrelevant emotional stimuli. The duration of each gaze fixation upon fear faces was shorter for those with greater PTSD symptoms, and this pattern was marginally significant for disgust faces. These findings suggest that PTSD symptoms may relate to greater attention toward non-facial background scenes and less attention toward facial stimuli, especially when conveying a fear or disgust expression

Neural responses to maternal praise and criticism: Relationship to depression and anxiety symptoms in high-risk adolescent girls

AbstractBackgroundThe parent-child relationship may be an important factor in the development of adolescent depressive and anxious symptoms. In adults, depressive symptoms relate to increased amygdala and attenuated prefrontal activation to maternal criticism. The current pilot study examined how depressive and anxiety symptoms in a high-risk adolescent population relate to neural responses to maternal feedback. Given previous research relating oxytocin to maternal behavior, we conducted exploratory analyses using oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genotype.MethodsEighteen females (ages 12–16) listened to maternal praise, neutral, and critical statements during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants completed the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders. The OXTR single nucleotide polymorphism, rs53576, was genotyped. Linear mixed models were used to identify symptom or allele (GG, AA/AG) by condition (critical, neutral, praise) interaction effects on brain activation.ResultsGreater symptoms related to greater right amygdala activation for criticism and reduced activation to praise. For left amygdala, greater symptoms related to reduced activation to both conditions. Anxiety symptoms related to differences in superior medial PFC activation patterns. Parental OXTR AA/AG allele related to reduced activation to criticism and greater activation to praise within the right amygdala.ConclusionsResults support a relationship between anxiety and depressive symptoms and prefrontal-amygdala responses to maternal feedback. The lateralization of amygdala findings suggests separate neural targets for interventions reducing reactivity to negative feedback or increasing salience of positive feedback. Exploratory analyses suggest that parents' OXTR genetic profile influences parent-child interactions and related adolescent brain responses