Attentional processes during emotional face perception in social anxiety disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis of eye-tracking findings

Günther, Vivien; Kropidlowski, Adam; Schmidt, F.; Koelkebeck, Katja; Kersting, Anette; Suslow, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.pnpbp.2021.110353

Cited by 43 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…Furthermore, anxiety often leads to the change of face-viewing gaze allocation at local facial features. For instance, individuals with higher level of social and/or Beck anxiety (evaluating 21 physiological and cognitive symptoms of anxiety through self-rated severity for each symptom during the past month; Beck et al, 1988 ) tend to gaze less at the eyes ( Moukheiber et al, 2010 ; Schneier et al, 2011 ; Günther et al, 2021 ) but more at the nose region ( Green & Guo, 2018 ). Given that face coverings only expose the eyes but conceal the nose and mouth regions, it is plausible that anxious individuals may have difficulty to sample sufficient facial cues for reliable face evaluation, and subsequently report different ratings of first impression traits between faces with and without coverings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Face Masks and Viewers’ Anxiety on Ratings of First Impressions from Faces

2021

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Face mask is now a common feature in our social environment. Although face covering reduces our ability to recognize other's face identity and facial expressions, little is known about its impact on the formation of first impressions from faces. In two online experiments, we presented unfamiliar faces displaying neutral expressions with and without face masks, and participants rated the perceived approachableness, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and dominance from each face on a 9-point scale. Their anxiety levels were measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Social Interaction Anxiety Scale. In comparison with mask-off condition, wearing face masks (mask-on) significantly increased the perceived approachableness and trustworthiness ratings, but showed little impact on increasing attractiveness or decreasing dominance ratings. Furthermore, both trait and state anxiety scores were negatively correlated with approachableness and trustworthiness ratings in both mask-off and mask-on conditions. Social anxiety scores, on the other hand, were negatively correlated with approachableness but not with trustworthiness ratings. It seems that the presence of a face mask can alter our first impressions of strangers. Although the ratings for approachableness, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and dominance were positively correlated, they appeared to be distinct constructs that were differentially influenced by face coverings and participants’ anxiety types and levels.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Face Masks and Viewers’ Anxiety on Ratings of First Impressions from Faces

2021

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“…The quick responses to posi-tive other-related input in highly anxious people can be explained using the Information-Processing Model of Anxiety [9,10]. Meta-analyses by Bar-Haim et al (2007) [29] and more recently Günther et al (2021) [30] concluded that anxious individuals have a small but robust early attentional bias towards threat. Although no threatening stimuli were present in this study, we found that emotional other-related faces were perceived differently by people with high anxiety.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To investigate how anxiety, the self-prioritisation effect, and the positivity bias are related in perceptual processes, we must draw from theories on cognition and perception in anxiety disorders. Cognitive and attentional theories describe a threat-related bias which gives anxious people a larger attentional bias towards threats compared with nonanxious people [29,30]. The theory is supported by the Information-Processing Model of Anxiety [9,10], according to which anxious individuals have heightened threat detection, meaning that they are more likely to perceive threats even when there are none.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceiving the Self and Emotions with an Anxious Mind: Evidence from an Implicit Perceptual Task

Feldborg

Lee

Hung

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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Anxiety disorders cause mental distress and low wellbeing in many people worldwide. Theories of anxiety describe negative worldviews and self-views as maintaining factors of the disorders. Recent research in social cognition has found a link between depression and altered perceptual biases to emotions, but the same research on anxiety is still missing. In this study, we measured perceptual biases to emotional and self-related stimuli in sub-clinically anxious participants and healthy controls using a self-emotional shape-label matching task. Results demonstrate that anxious participants had a diminished perceptual self-bias compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, the severity of anxiety was related to an emotional bias towards valanced other-related stimuli. The findings confirm the hypothesis that anxious individuals display an altered self-prioritisation effect in comparison with healthy individuals and that anxiety severity is linked to altered responses to emotionally valanced others. These findings have potential implications for early diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorders.

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“…Eye-tracking is a technique for monitoring the point of fixation (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye in relation to the head ( Klaib et al, 2021 ). It enables to capture the individual visual attention ( Günther et al, 2021 ) and has been widely used in research in the fields of marketing ( Rusnak, 2021 ; Guo et al, 2022 ), transportation ( Topolšek et al, 2016 ; Ahlström et al, 2021 ), medicine ( Tien et al, 2014 ), criminalistics ( Gehrer et al, 2021 ), professional education ( Salehi et al, 2018 ), advertisements ( Yen and Chiang, 2021 ), etc. In the construction industry, eye-tracking also allows researchers and safety managers to deeply understand the process and mechanism of construction workers’ hazard recognition and responses by observing and analyzing their visual patterns under different circumstances, and then take positive measures to improve construction safety management ( Hasanzadeh et al, 2019 ; Chong et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Review of Eye-Tracking Studies of Construction Safety

et al. 2022

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Safety is the most important concern in the construction industry, and construction workers’ attention allocation is closely associated with their hazard recognition and safety behaviors. The recent emergence of eye-tracking techniques allows researchers in construction safety to further investigate construction workers’ visual attention allocation during hazard recognition. The existing eye-tracking studies in construction safety need to be comprehensively understood, to provide practical suggestions for future research and on-site safety management. This study aims to summarize previous studies on the application of eye-tracking techniques to the construction safety context through a systematic literature review. The literature search and study selection process included 22 eligible studies. Content analysis was then carried out from participant selection, device selection, task design, area of interest determination, feature extraction, data analysis, and main findings. Major limitations of the existing studies are identified, and recommendations for future research in theoretical development, experiment improvement, and data analysis method advancement are proposed to address these limitations. Even though the application of eye-tracking techniques in construction safety research is still in its early stage, it is worth future continuous attention because relevant discoveries would be of great significance to hazard control and safety management in the construction industry.

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Attentional processes during emotional face perception in social anxiety disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis of eye-tracking findings

Cited by 43 publications

References 96 publications

Impact of Face Masks and Viewers’ Anxiety on Ratings of First Impressions from Faces

Impact of Face Masks and Viewers’ Anxiety on Ratings of First Impressions from Faces

Perceiving the Self and Emotions with an Anxious Mind: Evidence from an Implicit Perceptual Task

A Systematic Review of Eye-Tracking Studies of Construction Safety

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