Avoidance of emotional facial expressions in social anxiety: The Approach–Avoidance Task

Heuer, Kathrin; Rinck, Mike; Becker, Eni S.

doi:10.1016/j.brat.2007.08.010

Cited by 348 publications

(386 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…As evidence of this, Marsh et al (2005) found that participants were faster to push a joystick (''avoidance'') than to pull a joystick (''approach'') in response to angry faces by a difference of 65 ms. Similar effects have been found by Roelofs et al (2009a), Volman et al (2011), (Von Borries et al 2012, Seidel et al (2010), and also-in a group of socially anxious individuals-by Heuer et al (2007). However, conflicting results exist in the literature, as some researchers have found facilitation of approach behaviors toward fearful faces (Marsh et al 2005) and toward angry faces (Adams et al 2006).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Social embodiment in directional stepping behavior

et al. 2013

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Embodiment theories emphasize the role played by sensory and motor processes in psychological states, such as social information processing. Motivated by this idea, we examined how whole-body postural behaviors couple to social affective cues, viz., pictures of smiling and angry faces. We adopted a Simon-like paradigm, whereby healthy female volunteers were asked to select and initiate a forward or backward step on a force plate in response to the gender of the poser (male/female), regardless of emotion. Detailed analysis of the spatiotemporal unfolding of the body center of pressure during the steps revealed that task-irrelevant emotion had no effect on the initiation times of the steps, i.e., there was no evidence of an affective Simon effect. An unexpected finding was that steps were initiated relatively slow in response to female angry faces. This Stroop-like effect suggests that postural behavior is influenced by whether certain stimulus features match or mismatch.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Social embodiment in directional stepping behavior

et al. 2013

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“…For instance, people high in social anxiety have been found to display markedly stronger avoidance reactions to social threats (e.g. Heuer, Rinck, & Becker, 2007;Roelofs et al, 2010). In the present article, we highlight another source of individual differences in automatic approach and avoidance tendencies that may reverse people's default avoidance reaction to social threats, namely, trait anger.…”

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confidence: 65%

“…We therefore also calculated AAT scores, as previous researchers have done (Heuer et al, 2007;Radke et al, 2013;Wiers et al, 2011). Specifically, we subtracted the median response time for pushing (avoidance) minus the median response time for pulling (approach): Positive values reflect a relative approach bias (faster approach than avoidance responses), whereas negative values a relative avoidance bias (faster avoidance than approach responses) towards the specific category of stimuli.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drawn to danger: trait anger predicts automatic approach behaviour to angry faces

Veenstra

Schneider

Bushman

et al. 2016

Cognition and Emotion

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“…Although cultural and social learning factors frequently preclude identifying the role of biological factors in the long-term consequences of stress in human studies, we have recently shown in rats that exposure to stress during the peripubertal period leads to abnormal social interactions at adulthood (M arquez et al, 2013); the same pattern of social alterations was found when stress was substituted by administration of the glucocorticoid stress hormone, corticosterone (Veenit et al, 2013). Specifically, peripubertally stressed rats showed reduced motivation to explore a juvenile conspecific versus an object in the threechambered test (M arquez et al, 2013), a task used in non-human primates and rodents (Bauman et al, 2013;Moy et al, 2004) that can be considered akin to social approach-avoidance tasks used in humans (Heuer et al, 2007;Roelofs et al, 2009). Particularly susceptible to the long-term effects of this form of peripubertal stress is the prefrontal cortex (M arquez et al, 2013), the engagement of which has been shown to be critically involved in social behaviors in humans (Dichter et al, 2009;Ho et al, 2012) and in animal models (Avale et al, 2011;Covington et al, 2010;Stack et al, 2010).…”

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confidence: 95%

Social deficits induced by peripubertal stress in rats are reversed by resveratrol

Poirier

Imamura

Zanoletti

et al. 2014

Journal of Psychiatric Research

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a b s t r a c tAdolescence is increasingly recognized as a critical period for the development of the social system, through the maturation of social competences and of their underlying neural circuitries. The present study sought to test the utility of resveratrol, a dietary phenol recently reported to have mood lifting properties, in modulating social interaction that is deficient following early life adversity. The main aims were to 1) pharmacologically restore normative social investigation levels dampened by peripubertal stress in rats and 2) identify neural pathways engaged by this pharmacological approach. Following peripubertal (P28e42) stress consisting of unpredictable exposures to fearful experiences, at adulthood the subjects' propensity for social exploration was examined in the three-chamber apparatus, comparing time invested in social or non-social investigation. Administered intraperitoneally 30 min before testing, resveratrol (20 mg/kg) normalized the peripubertal stress-induced social investigation deficit seen in the vehicle group, selectively altering juvenile but not object exploration. Examination of prefrontal cortex subregion protein samples following acute resveratrol treatment in a separate cohort revealed that while monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) enzymatic activity remained unaltered, nuclear AKT activation was selectively increased in the infralimbic cortex, but not in the prelimbic or anterior cingulate cortex. In contrast, androgen receptor nuclear localization was increased in the prelimbic cortex, but not in the infralimbic or anterior cingulate cortex. This demonstration that social contact deficits are reversed by resveratrol administration emphasizes a prosocial role for this dietary phenol, and evokes the possibility of developing new treatments for social dysfunctions.

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Avoidance of emotional facial expressions in social anxiety: The Approach–Avoidance Task

Cited by 348 publications

References 34 publications

Social embodiment in directional stepping behavior

Social embodiment in directional stepping behavior

Drawn to danger: trait anger predicts automatic approach behaviour to angry faces

Social deficits induced by peripubertal stress in rats are reversed by resveratrol

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