Anxiety and sensitivity to gaze direction in emotionally expressive faces.

Abstract

This study investigated the role of neutral, happy, fearful, and angry facial expressions in enhancing orienting to the direction of eye gaze. Photographs of faces with either direct or averted gaze were presented. A target letter (T or L) appeared unpredictably to the left or the right of the face, either 300 ms or 700 ms after gaze direction changed. Response times were faster in congruent conditions (i.e., when the eyes gazed toward the target) relative to incongruent conditions (when the eyes gazed away from the target letter). Facial expression did influence reaction times, but these effects were qualified by individual differences in self-reported anxiety. High trait-anxious participants showed an enhanced orienting to the eye gaze of faces with fearful expressions relative to all other expressions. In contrast, when the eyes stared straight ahead, trait anxiety was associated with slower responding when the facial expressions depicted anger. Thus, in anxiety-prone people attention is more likely to be held by an expression of anger, whereas attention is guided more potently by fearful facial expressions. Keywords emotion; facial expression; gaze direction; anxiety; attentional orienting Facial expressions are potent social cues and are ideal stimuli to investigate how emotionally relevant information is prioritized over other information in attentional and perceptual processing (Vuilleumier, 2002). Strong individual differences have, however, been found in the processing of facial expressions of emotion. To illustrate, several studies have shown that individual differences in trait anxiety are associated with an increased propensity to orient attention toward facial expressions of threat (e.g., Bradley, Mogg, & Millar, 2000;Fox, 2002;Mogg & Bradley, 1999) and that amygdala response to threatening facial expressions is also modulated by the magnitude of self-reported anxiety (Bishop, Duncan, & Lawrence, 2004;Etkin et al., 2004). In a typical study, a dot-probe paradigm is used in which pairs of faces differing in expression are presented simultaneously on a computer screen for 500 ms and are immediately followed by a probe. Probes appearing in the location previously occupied by a threatening stimulus (e.g., threat word or facial expression) are detected faster by anxious individuals than probes appearing in the location of a neutral or positive stimulus (e.g., a happy face). Low-anxious people usually show no bias on this task, although sometimes they show an attentional vigilance for positive material (e.g., Fox, 1993;MacLeod & Mathews, 1988). This speeding to detect an object appearing near the location of threat has been well established in people with generalized anxiety disorder (e.g., MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986;Mogg, Bradley, & Williams, 1995) and social phobia (e.g., Mogg, Philippot, & Bradley, 2004), as well as in nonclinical groups reporting high levels of trait anxiety (e.g., Fox, 1993;Mathews & MacLeod, 1985). More recent research has focused more specifically on the various compone...

Fearful, surprised, happy, and angry facial expressions modulate gaze-oriented attention: Behavioral and ERP evidence

“…For each subject, only RTs within 2.5 standard deviations from the mean of each condition were kept in the mean RT calculation (Van Selst & Jolicoeur, 1994). On average, less than 7.5% of trials were excluded per condition in each experiment.It has been shown that a face gazing directly at the participant triggers slower response times than the same face looking to the side, especially when displaying a threatening facial expression (Fox et al, 2007;Georgiou et al, 2005;Mathews et al 2003), which is consistent with the idea that different processes underlie the perception of direct and averted gaze (George, Driver, & Dolan, 2001). Because direct gaze seems to capture attention to a larger extent than averted gaze (Senju & Hasegawa, 2005), we followed what has been done in previous gaze-orienting studies (Bayless et al, 2011;Fox et al, 2007;Mathews et al 2003) and analyzed direct gaze separately from averted gaze.…”

“…Because direct gaze seems to capture attention to a larger extent than averted gaze (Senju & Hasegawa, 2005), we followed what has been done in previous gaze-orienting studies (Bayless et al, 2011;Fox et al, 2007;Mathews et al 2003) and analyzed direct gaze separately from averted gaze.…”

“…Finally, this lack of GOE modulation by fear could originate from the use of static rather than dynamic facial expressions (e.g., Hietanen & Leppänen, 2003), since emotions are better processed when seen dynamically than statically (Sato & Yoshikawa, 2004). Additionally, some studies have shown that the GOE enhancement for fearful compared to neutral or happy faces depended on participants' anxiety level (Fox et al, 2007;Mathews et al, 2003;Putman et al, 2006), while others reported such a modulation even in non-anxious participants (Bayless et al, 2011;Neath, Nilsen, Gittsovich, & Itier, 2013). Thus, it remains unclear whether modulation of attention orienting by gaze with fear is limited to highanxious individuals or can be seen in the general population.…”

“…This robust Gaze Orienting Effect (GOE) was shown for letter discrimination, target detection, or localization tasks, for Stimulus Onset Asynchronies (SOAs) up to 700 ms, and when the cue is non-predictive or even counter-predictive of the target location (for a review, see Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper, 2007 Many studies have investigated whether emotions modulate attention orienting by gaze. A GOE increase with fearful compared to neutral and/or happy faces has been reported and interpreted as reflecting the evolutionary advantage to orient rapidly in the direction of a potential threat (Bayless, Glover, Taylor, & Itier, 2011;Fox, Mathews, Calder, & Yiend, 2007;Graham, Friesen, Fichtenholtz, & LaBar, 2010;Mathews, Fox, Yiend, & Calder, 2003;Pecchinenda, Pes, Ferlazzo, & Zoccolotti, 2008;Putman, Hermans, & Van Honk, 2006;Tipples, 2006). However, some studies failed to report such a modulation (Fichtenholtz, Hopfinger, Graham, Detwiler, & LaBar, 2007;Galfano et al, 2011;Hietanen & Leppänen, 2003;Holmes, Mogg, Garcia, & Bradley, 2010).…”

“…Angry faces failed to enhance the GOE compared to neutral faces in most studies (Bayless et al, 2011;Fox et al, 2007;Hietanen & Leppänen, 2003). However, in these studies, fearful faces were always included.…”