Effects of alcohol on the processing of social threat‐related stimuli in socially phobic women

Abstract

Alcohol disrupts appraisal of social anxiety-related stimuli in controls but not in social phobics; in these it hinders the consolidation of memory. This also suggests that social phobics experience similar anxiety with and without alcohol, but remember this experienced anxiety less precisely. This effect might act as a reinforcer for the use of alcohol for the purpose of self-medication in future situations.

What does the facial dot-probe task tell us about attentional processes in social anxiety? A systematic review

“…The between-group comparisons yielded a small to moderate effect for negative-neutral (g between ¼ 0.38). Only one study (Gotlib et al, 2004) reported ES between regarding positive versus neutral face pairs but found no effect (g between ¼ 0.16, n.s) Fig. 1. (3) Induction of social threat (see Table 6)…”

“…This hypothesis was tested with several experimental paradigms. Several studies with the emotional Stroop test showed that individuals with SAD take longer to color-name social threat words compared to neutral words (e.g., Amir, Freshman, & Foa, 2002;Becker, Rinck, Margraf, & Roth, 2001;Gerlach, Schiller, Wild, & Rist, 2006;Mattia, Heimberg, & Hope, 1993), suggesting a vigilance effect. However, this effect is likely based not only on attention, but also on subsequent information processing that is independent from attention (Waters, Sayette, & Wertz, 2003).…”

“…By contrast, studies using longer stimulus durations yielded no vigilance effect for social anxious individuals (e.g. Gotlib et al, 2004;Mogg, Philippot, & Bradley, 2004). Rossignol et al (2012) used an emotional oddball task in which they investigated the cognitive processing of different emotional facial expressions appearing amongst neutral faces over time.…”

Dimensional structure of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale according to the analysis of data obtained with a German version

“…Respondents of the samples 2 and 3 were originally recruited for other study objectives (e.g., Gerlach, Mourlane, & Rist, 2004;Gerlach, Schiller, Wild, & Rist, 2006;Stevens, Rist, & Gerlach, 2009). Presence or absence of diagnoses was derived by means of the German Version of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV disorders (SKID-I -DSM-IV; Wittchen, Wunderlich, Gruschwitz, & Zaudig, 1997).…”

Effects of alcohol on ratings of emotional facial expressions in social phobics

“…Also, if a stressor is easily or especially efficiently appraised, the anxiolytic effects will be diminished. In a test of the predictions of the model, Gerlach, Schiller, Wild, and Rist (2006) found that alcohol eliminated the implicit memory bias for social threat words in socially phobic women. To our knowledge, the influence of alcohol on the explicit evaluation of emotional face stimuli has not yet been examined in patients with social phobia.…”