title: Enhanced avoidance behavior in social anxiety: evidence from a probabilistic learning task.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Social phobia is characterized by avoidance of feared social situations. Although avoidance is a central feature of social anxiety, few studies have examined avoidance learning.
  
  
  METHODS
  We used a probabilistic instrumental learning paradigm where participants had to learn by trial and error which response led to the disappearance of a neutral or angry face. 20 high socially anxious and 20 non-socially anxious individuals with an average level of social anxiety learned to avoid an angry or a neutral face by choosing one of two cues. Each of the cues led to the disappearance of the face either with high or low reinforcement probability.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Groups learned to choose the more effective cue across trials and did not differ with regard to self-report valence, arousal for the faces or the a posteriori estimated reinforcement probability for both cues. High socially anxious individuals as compared to the controls chose the high probability cue significantly more often and were slower particularly when the neutral face could be avoided. Notably, HSA engaged in more avoidance responding to the neutral as compared to the angry face early on during the experiment.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Due to the experimental design, the observed avoidance behavior most likely reflects the motivation for avoidance rather than contingency learning per se.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In social anxiety, neutral faces might be processed as ambiguous social cues and strongly motivate avoidance behavior.
authors: Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Cologne, Germany; Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Giessen, Germany. Electronic address: stephan.stevens@uni-koeln.de.
authors: Stephan
authors: S
authors: Stevens
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Peters
authors: Anna
authors: A
authors: Abraham
authors: Christiane
authors: C
authors: Hermann
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011337:Probability Learning; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Avoidance; Emotional facial expressions; Probabilistic learning; Social anxiety