Interpretive bias in social phobia: An ERP study with morphed emotional schematic faces

Abstract

Individuals with social phobia fear negative evaluation, which is most directly signalled by an angry expression of the interlocutor's face. This study investigated the processing of 3 series of schematic emotional faces, which were morphed in 7 steps from a neutral face to an angry, happy, or sad face by systematically varying features of the mouth, eyes, and eyebrows. Individuals with social phobia or spider phobia rated angry faces as more arousing than controls. Social phobics did not identify angry faces faster and showed no greater latent trait to identify a face as angry than controls. ERP data showed a modulation of the face-specific Nl70 by facial emotion, although this did not discriminate social phobics from controls. Instead, phobic subjects exhibited generally increased visual PI amplitudes, suggesting a state of hypervigilance for incoming stimuli. Results are discussed in the context of psychophysiological abnormalities in the anxiety disorder spectrum.

Psychophysiological evidence for cortisol-induced reduction in early bias for implicit social threat in social phobia

“…In addition, Rossignol et al (2007) reported facilitated detection of subtle changes in anger expression during face repetition in participants with non-clinical social anxiety compared to low socially anxious participants, as reflected by a reduced N2b wave around 300 ms post-stimulus. Only a few previous ERP studies investigated angry face processing in participants with clinically diagnosed SAD (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006;Kolassa et al, 2007Kolassa et al, , 2009. In contrast to the present study, these found no evidence for increased early processing of task-irrelevant angry faces, although enhanced right temporo-parietal N170 amplitudes were found during explicit emotion identification of angry faces in one study (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006).…”

“…In contrast to the present study, these found no evidence for increased early processing of task-irrelevant angry faces, although enhanced right temporo-parietal N170 amplitudes were found during explicit emotion identification of angry faces in one study (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006). The lack of a processing bias for implicit social threat in these studies may be partly due to the use of schematic face stimuli (Kolassa et al, 2007(Kolassa et al, , 2009) which show a different electrophysiological response pattern than photographic faces (Kolassa et al, 2007) and may be less sensitive for detecting Figure 2 Correlation between social anxiety (SPAI total score) and cortisol-induced change in P2 amplitude for angry faces in the masked emotional Stroop task (i.e., P2 masked angry placebo À cortisol). Positive values on the x-axis indicate larger P2 amplitudes on midline electrodes (Fz, Cz, Pz) in the placebo condition, compared to the cortisol condition.…”

“…Furthermore, all of these studies (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006;Kolassa et al, 2007Kolassa et al, , 2009) focused on occipito-temporal electrodes and did not report on the early and late midline positive ERP components that we investigated in the present study, and which have consistently demonstrated emotional expression effects in healthy participants (see Holmes et al, 2008). Emotional modulation of the N170 component has been less consistently found and may be only present when the identification of the facial emotion is explicitly task-relevant, as suggested by Kolassa et al (2009, see also Kolassa andMiltner, 2006), which would explain why we did not observe this effect in the present study.…”

“…However, studies using ERPs to investigate threat processing in SAD are relatively scarce. In three recent studies Kolassa et al (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006;Kolassa et al, 2007Kolassa et al, , 2009 investigated threat processing in patients with SAD using angry compared to neutral and happy faces. Two of these studies (Kolassa et al, 2007(Kolassa et al, , 2009 showed no differential processing of angry faces in SAD during either color or explicit emotion identification of schematic faces.…”

“…In three recent studies Kolassa et al (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006;Kolassa et al, 2007Kolassa et al, , 2009 investigated threat processing in patients with SAD using angry compared to neutral and happy faces. Two of these studies (Kolassa et al, 2007(Kolassa et al, , 2009 showed no differential processing of angry faces in SAD during either color or explicit emotion identification of schematic faces. Results of the other study (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006) showed biased early processing of angry photographic faces in patients with SAD, as reflected by enhanced right temporo-parietal N170 amplitudes, during explicit emotion identification but not when emotion processing was implicit (i.e., during gender identification).…”