Background: Social anxiety has been found to influence certain characteristics of the voice during various structured speaking tasks, but its assessment in more naturalistic contexts is scarce....Show moreBackground: Social anxiety has been found to influence certain characteristics of the voice during various structured speaking tasks, but its assessment in more naturalistic contexts is scarce. When directly looked at, socially anxious individuals feel more intimidated compared to when their social partner averts their eye gaze. The primary aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between social anxiety and five vocal characteristics (including mean voice intensity, mean fundamental frequency, rate, pausing, and speech duration) during a face-to-face conversation. A secondary aim was to examine the moderating effect of a social partner’s gaze direction (direct vs. averted gaze) on this relationship. Methods: Fifty-two university students (M = 21.27 years old, 86.5% female) participated in a face-to-face conversation task with a same-sex confederate. Both the participants and the confederates were given four question cards which they were asked to answer interchangeably. The confederates’ cards also included instructions about gaze direction without the participants knowing. Throughout the conversation task, participants’ voices were recorded using high-quality wearable eye-trackers. Results: The analyses revealed that neither social anxiety nor social partner gaze direction affected vocal characteristics during the conversation task. Conclusion: Increased mean fundamental frequency and degree of pausing and decreased mean voice intensity, speech rate, and duration were not identified as potential physiological indicators of social anxiety. Though translating such findings into real-life social interactions proved to be a difficult venture, future researchers could further investigate this topic with the hope of better clarifying the relationship between social anxiety and atypical voice patterns, as well as the moderating effect of confederate gaze direction on the speech patterns of more or less socially anxious individuals.Show less
The literature suggests a possible link between self-esteem and the affective component of eye contact. We drew on these findings to examine whether this link is also present with a subcomponent of...Show moreThe literature suggests a possible link between self-esteem and the affective component of eye contact. We drew on these findings to examine whether this link is also present with a subcomponent of self-esteem, namely parental self-efficacy. Parental self-efficacy has a mutual influence on parental care, and, along with eye contact, they are critical to the formation of a healthy parent-child relationship, which in turn fosters favorable child development outcomes. However, not much is known about how parental self-efficacy and parental care impact (the experience of) eye contact between a parent and their child. The present study (n = 62) investigated the association between parental care as perceived by the child, parental selfefficacy, and the affective response of parents to eye contact with their own child. Parents engaged in an fMRI task where they were shown pre-recorded movies of target people gazing directly at them. Targets were either the participant’s own child or an unfamiliar child. The objective was to explore whether parental self-efficacy impacts how parents feel after direct eye contact with their child and if parental care influenced this relationship. Our findings did not support these expectations. The study provides further grounds for the link between parental selfefficacy and parental care. Additional implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.Show less