Psychophysiological responses to eye contact in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

Myllyneva, Aki; Ranta, Klaus; Hietanen, Jari K.

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.05.005

Cited by 44 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Although we measured general trait anxiety in this study, as opposed to specifically social anxiety, those are strongly associated. Imaging studies of SAD patients have shown that direct eye contact (vs. averted) in neutral faces increased activity in the vmPFC, the parahippocamal gyrus and the posterior cingulate (Schneier et al , 2011) compared to controls, and adolescents with anxiety disorders have enhanced autonomic reaction and self-evaluated arousal during the perception of direct gaze (Myllyneva et al , 2015). In the current study, a subset of participants were eye-tracked during perception of similar face stimuli as those used in the free-viewing condition in the scanner.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, we tested whether these personality traits may affect how constrained gaze is perceived, for all emotions, as well as for specific emotional expressions; we also examined how amygdala connectivity is modulated by these personality traits, using questionnaires specifically addressing each of them. Previous studies have indeed demonstrated that anxious individuals have shortened viewing time in the eye-region (Daly, 1978; Garner et al , 2006; Moukheiber et al , 2010), and recent work from Myllyneva et al (2015) has revealed increased autonomic arousal and shorter self-controlled viewing time for direct gaze in adolescents with social anxiety disorders compared with controls. If we think of anxiety traits as a continuum in the population, we would expect that anxiety would be potentiating the effect of constraining the attention to the eye region of emotional faces and that this effect would be maximum for anger given that this emotion represents a direct threat for the observer.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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The effect of constraining eye-contact during dynamic emotional face perception—an fMRI study

Hadjikhani

Zürcher

Lassalle

et al. 2017

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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Eye-contact modifies how we perceive emotions and modulates activity in the social brain network. Here, using fMRI, we demonstrate that adding a fixation cross in the eye region of dynamic facial emotional stimuli significantly increases activation in the social brain of healthy, neurotypical participants when compared with activation for the exact same stimuli observed in a free-viewing mode. In addition, using PPI analysis, we show that the degree of amygdala connectivity with the rest of the brain is enhanced for the constrained view for all emotions tested except for fear, and that anxiety and alexithymia modulate the strength of amygdala connectivity for each emotion differently. Finally, we show that autistic traits have opposite effects on amygdala connectivity for fearful and angry emotional expressions, suggesting that these emotions should be treated separately in studies investigating facial emotion processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

The effect of constraining eye-contact during dynamic emotional face perception—an fMRI study

Hadjikhani

Zürcher

Lassalle

et al. 2017

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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show abstract

“…However, in participants scoring high on neuroticism, direct gaze elicited greater right-sided frontal EEG asymmetry as compared to averted gaze. In another study, the frontal EEG asymmetry response to gaze direction was investigated in adolescents with clinically diagnosed social anxiety disorder (Myllyneva et al, 2015). The results showed marginally greater left-sided frontal EEG response to direct gaze in control participants as compared to the clinical group.…”

Section: Asymmetric Frontal Cortical Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective Eye Contact: An Integrative Review

2018

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In recent years, many studies have shown that perceiving other individuals’ direct gaze has robust effects on various attentional and cognitive processes. However, considerably less attention has been devoted to investigating the affective effects triggered by eye contact. This article reviews research concerning the effects of others’ gaze direction on observers’ affective responses. The review focuses on studies in which affective reactions have been investigated in well-controlled laboratory experiments, and in which contextual factors possibly influencing perceivers’ affects have been controlled. Two important themes emerged from this review. First, explicit affective evaluations of seeing another’s direct versus averted gaze have resulted in rather inconsistent findings; some studies report more positive subjective feelings to direct compared to averted gaze, whereas others report the opposite pattern. These contradictory findings may be related, for example, to differences between studies in terms of the capability of direct-gaze stimuli to elicit feelings of self-involvement. Second, studies relying on various implicit measures have reported more consistent results; they indicate that direct gaze increases affective arousal, and more importantly, that eye contact automatically evokes a positively valenced affective reaction. Based on the review, possible psychological mechanisms for the positive affective reactions elicited by eye contact are described.

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“…Social anxiety is characterized by an intense fear and avoidance of social situations in which an individual may be scrutinized by others (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and, at the same time, individuals with social anxiety also show biases in information processing which drives them more likely to interpret social situations in a negative way (Clark and McManus, 2002). Indeed, compared to controls, individuals with social anxiety experience eye contact as aversive (Myllyneva et al, 2015), and are also prone to interpret a gaze direction as being directed at them (Gamer et al, 2011; Schulze et al, 2013). Being ostracized does not only evoke negative affect, but also lowers one’s experience of fulfillment of the basic needs (e.g., belongingness) (Wirth et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye Contact Judgment Is Influenced by Perceivers’ Social Anxiety But Not by Their Affective State

2017

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Fast and accurate judgment of whether another person is making eye contact or not is crucial for our social interaction. As affective states have been shown to influence social perceptions and judgments, we investigated the influence of observers’ own affective states and trait anxiety on their eye contact judgments. In two experiments, participants were required to judge whether animated faces (Experiment 1) and real faces (Experiment 2) with varying gaze angles were looking at them or not. Participants performed the task in pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant odor conditions. The results from two experiments showed that eye contact judgments were not modulated by observers’ affective state, yet participants with higher levels of social anxiety accepted a wider range of gaze deviations from the direct gaze as eye contact. We conclude that gaze direction judgments depend on individual differences in affective predispositions, yet they are not amenable to situational affective influences.

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Psychophysiological responses to eye contact in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

Cited by 44 publications

References 39 publications

The effect of constraining eye-contact during dynamic emotional face perception—an fMRI study

The effect of constraining eye-contact during dynamic emotional face perception—an fMRI study

Affective Eye Contact: An Integrative Review

Eye Contact Judgment Is Influenced by Perceivers’ Social Anxiety But Not by Their Affective State

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