title: Social anxiety under load: the effects of perceptual load in processing emotional faces.
abstract: Previous studies in the social anxiety arena have shown an impaired attentional control system, similar to that found in trait anxiety. However, the effect of task demands on social anxiety in socially threatening stimuli, such as angry faces, remains unseen. In the present study, 54 university students scoring high and low in the Social Interaction and Performance Anxiety and Avoidance Scale (SIPAAS) questionnaire, participated in a target letter discrimination task while task-irrelevant face stimuli (angry, disgust, happy, and neutral) were simultaneously presented. The results showed that high (compared to low) socially anxious individuals were more prone to distraction by task-irrelevant stimuli, particularly under high perceptual load conditions. More importantly, for such individuals, the accuracy proportions for angry faces significantly differed between the low and high perceptual load conditions, which is discussed in light of current evolutionary models of social anxiety.
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal.
authors.forename: Sandra C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Soares
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal.
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rocha
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal.
authors.forename: Tiago
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Neiva
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Education, The University of Beira Interior , Covilhã, Portugal.
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rodrigues
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal.
authors.forename: Carlos F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Silva
keywords: attentional control; emotional faces; perceptual load; social anxiety; target discrimination task