title: Exogenous attention to angry faces in social anxiety: a perceptual accuracy approach.
abstract: We investigated the interaction between endogenous and exogenous attention for the processing of emotional stimuli in individuals with high social anxiety using accuracy rates. Following the presentation of an endogenous cue at the centre, exogenous cues (i.e., angry and neutral faces) were presented at peripheral locations. Subsequently, non-emotional masked targets were presented, and the participants were instructed to discriminate between the targets. With respect to exogenous attention, high socially anxious people exhibited higher accuracy when the angry face and target appeared on the same side than when they appeared on different sides, whereas low socially anxious people did not exhibit such effects. On the other hand, different abilities of endogenous attention were not observed between high and low socially anxious people. These results suggest that exogenous attention is biased towards threat in high socially anxious people.
authors: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan. morimori@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
authors: Jun
authors: J
authors: Moriya
authors: Yoshihiko
authors: Y
authors: Tanno
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D014796:Visual Perception