Vigilance-Avoidance Toward Negative Faces in Social Anxiety With and Without Comorbid Depression

Bibliographic Data

ID15519201
AuthorsTomoko Kishimoto (0000-0003-1223-4464, Nankai University, corresponding author), Wen Xu (0000-0002-2820-6794, Peking University), Xu Wen (0000-0003-3781-1125), Mingzhu Li (0000-0003-0721-5728, Washington University in St. Louis), Rong‐yan Zhang (0000-0002-0654-715X, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Nisha Yao (0000-0002-6117-5694, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Yunzhen Huang (0000-0002-7927-7752, Peking University), Mingyi Qian (0000-0002-6587-9189, Peking University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume12
Pages636961-636961
Publication date2021-03-31
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrontiers in Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1664-0640 • E-ISSN: 1664-0640
PublisherFrontiers Media (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3389/fpsyt.2021.636961
PMID33868053
OpenAlexW3142739280
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited47

Despite the growing evidence for the attentional bias toward emotional related stimuli in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD), it remains unclear how the attentional bias manifests in normal individuals with SAD and/or depressive traits. To address this question, we recruited three groups of normal participants with different psychiatric traits-individuals with comorbid SAD and depression (SADd, N = 19), individuals with only SAD (SAD, N = 15), and healthy control individuals (HC, N = 19). In a dot-probe paradigm, participants view angry, disgusted, and sad face stimuli with durations ranging from very brief (i.e., 14ms) that renders stimuli completely intangible, to relatively long (i.e., 2000ms) that guarantees image visibility. We find significant early vigilance (i.e., on brief stimuli) and later avoidance (i.e., on long stimuli) toward angry faces in the SADd group. We also find vigilance toward angry and disgusted faces in the SAD group. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to unify both vigilance and avoidance within the same experimental paradigm, providing direct evidence for the "vigilance-avoidance" theory of comorbid SAD and depression. In sum, these results provide evidence for the potential behavioral differences induced by anxiety-depression comorbidity and a single trait in non-clinical populations, but the lack of a depression-only group cannot reveal the effects of high levels of depression on the results. The limitations are discussed

Anxiety · Attentional bias · Cognitive psychology · Comorbidity · Developmental psychology · Psychiatry · Social anxiety · Trait · Vigilance (psychology · Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes · Clinical Psychology · Mental Health Research Topics · Neuroscience and Music Perception · Psychology

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