This study investigates the relationship between rejection sensitivity and social feedback learning rate. Rejection sensitivity is an aspect of social anxiety disorder which is especially prevalent...Show moreThis study investigates the relationship between rejection sensitivity and social feedback learning rate. Rejection sensitivity is an aspect of social anxiety disorder which is especially prevalent in adolescents. SAD has a significant relationship with social feedback learning rate and this study aims to go a step further and research whether rejection sensitivity is a leading factor in this relationship. Participants fill in the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale as well as the Children’s Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire. Afterwards they will do a speech task which includes a public speaking section and is judged by confederate judges who will rate them on their performance. The participants rate themselves before and after the feedback from the judges. The difference between individual’s rating before and after the feedback will be measured and this will form the basis of our data for analysis. During the analysis a correlational relationship will be analyzed between rejection sensitivity, its sub measures and social feedback learning rate. The hypothesis of the study is that individuals with higher rejection sensitivity score will have higher negative social feedback learning rates. Results show no significant relationship between the variables.Show less
An attentional bias for threatening stimuli in social anxiety is a common finding in the literature. It often results in people avoiding eye contact during social interactions. The present study...Show moreAn attentional bias for threatening stimuli in social anxiety is a common finding in the literature. It often results in people avoiding eye contact during social interactions. The present study tested an intervention in which nonverbal behaviour of virtual humans was used to encourage making more eye contact during conversations. There were two types of virtual humans. One showed contingent (responsive) positive behaviour during the conversation, like nodding or pupil dilation, when the participant was looking at the eye region of the virtual human. The other showed non contingent (non responsive) positive behaviour. Anxiety was measured with the SAS-A beforehand and all participants had a conversation with both virtual humans about twelve different topics. Participants who scored higher on social anxiety, overall did not make significantly less eye contact with the virtual human. They also did not make significantly more eye contact with the contingent (responsive) virtual human and did not perceive the contingent virtual human as more likable. These results are mainly in contrast with earlier findings. Theories and possible improvements to the study are discussed.Show less
Selective mutism (SM) is a relatively rare childhood disorder characterized by a consistent failure to speak in specific settings, such as school, despite speaking normally in other settings, such...Show moreSelective mutism (SM) is a relatively rare childhood disorder characterized by a consistent failure to speak in specific settings, such as school, despite speaking normally in other settings, such as at home. Little is known about the etiology of SM, although some studies show evidence of social anxiety or problems in communication skills as underlying mechanisms. This study investigated whether some children with SM in the Netherlands have more social anxiety and more problems in communication skills than peers. Moreover, it examined which of these factors has the strongest association with the non-speaking behaviour characteristic of SM. Parents of 28 children with SM (Nboys=6; Ngirls=22) and 44 children without SM (Nboys=19, Ngirls=23) aged 4-9 years completed questionnaires on their child's speaking behaviour (Selective Mutism Questionnaire), communication skills (Children's Communication Checklist) and social anxiety (Social Worries Anxiety Index for Young children). Results show that children with SM have significantly more social anxiety and more problems in communication skills than peers. Furthermore, more problems in non-speaking behaviour are significantly associated with more social anxiety and more problems in communication skills. Non-speaking behaviour has a stronger correlation with social anxiety than with communication skills. A hierarchical regression shows that social anxiety is a strong significant predictor (80%) of nonspeaking behaviour. Communication skills have minimal additional impact (0.5%) on the variance of non-speaking behaviour. Finally, communication skills partly (11%) explain why some children with social anxiety do not speak and other children do. A limitation of this study is the small sample size, which did not allow to control for ethnicity. Possibly this affects the outcomes of communication skills. Nevertheless, we feel confident that SM is mainly related to social anxiety. Communication skills have a small influence on the outcome of SM. Based on this we recommend that treatment of SM should mainly focus on social anxiety and in addition we should be alert for problems in communication skills.Show less
Background: Adolescence is a critical period for growth and socio-emotional development where mental illnesses such as social anxiety have their onset. Factors such as negative perceptions of...Show moreBackground: Adolescence is a critical period for growth and socio-emotional development where mental illnesses such as social anxiety have their onset. Factors such as negative perceptions of others and self-esteem have been shown to have a relationship to social anxiety. Aim: This study explores the interplay between self-esteem, social anxiety, and negative thoughts about others, and investigates whether an intervention (SASS) could have an impact on these constructs. Methods: This study is a subproject based on the larger research In Je Sas! at Leiden University. Participants ages 11 to 17 were recruited from schools in Leiden. They took part in the SASS intervention, gave a speech, and completed a number of self-reported questionnaires before and after the intervention. Among them, three were used in the present study. Results: Participants with social anxiety presented lower self-esteem and had more negative perceptions of the audience during a speech task. Self-esteem did not moderate the relationship between social anxiety and audience perception. Post-intervention, participants’ social anxiety levels had decreased, self-esteem increased and audience perception improved. Conclusion: Overall, these findings contribute to the existing literature regarding social anxiety among adolescents and help highlight the contribution of self-esteem to social anxiety. Future research should delve deeper into the mechanisms of social anxiety, considering factors like self-esteem. Limitations of the present study, such as the small sample size and lack of a control group, are considered in the discussion.Show less
Social anxiety disorder runs in families. Next to genetically inherited dispositions, there are two main environmental pathways of parent-to-child transmission of anxiety: the verbal transmission...Show moreSocial anxiety disorder runs in families. Next to genetically inherited dispositions, there are two main environmental pathways of parent-to-child transmission of anxiety: the verbal transmission of information and the indirect modelling of information. In this study the parental verbal threat vs safety expressions about strangers on children’s reported fear and the possible moderating role of child’s temperament in a community sample of 10-to-13-year-old children (N = 75) is investigated. In the experiment, primary caregivers gave standardized verbal threat vs safety information about two strangers to their child. Then children separately interacted with the two strangers in a series of social tasks where they gave a social speech, watched back their social performance, and interacted with the strangers about their performance. After that, each participating child was asked to report their fear beliefs about each stranger. Child temperament was measured using the Early Adolescence Temperament Questionnaire (EATQ), filled in by both parents. Results showed that the effect of parental verbal communication on the fear beliefs of the child was significant: children reported more fear beliefs to the stranger paired with parental threat (versus safety) information. The effect was, however, not qualified by a higher order interaction between condition and child’s temperament, suggesting that the impact of parental verbal information does not differ as a function of temperament. The findings reveal that a brief exposure to parental verbal threat induces fear beliefs in children, irrespective to the temperament scores.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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This study investigated the impact of parental verbal threat (vs. safety) information regarding a stranger on a child’s subjective and behavioral fear responses towards that stranger. As a...Show moreThis study investigated the impact of parental verbal threat (vs. safety) information regarding a stranger on a child’s subjective and behavioral fear responses towards that stranger. As a manipulation, parents were instructed to provide their children (N=79), aged 10-14 years, with standardized verbal threat or safety information about two strangers in the lab. Then, children engaged in a social interaction task with the two strangers (blind to their condition) separately, while child behavioral avoidance was recorded. Following the task, children reported fear beliefs for each stranger. Also, parents completed a self-report questionnaire on social anxiety symptoms. Children reported more fear beliefs for the stranger paired with the threat information, but no significant difference was found in observed avoidance. In addition, verbal threat information did not have a stronger influence on children’s observed avoidance in case of higher reported fear beliefs. Similarly, high parental social anxiety symptoms did not moderate the impact of verbal threat information on the child’s cognitive or behavioural fear indices. However, they did have a significant influence on behavioural avoidance, regardless of verbal information. Overall, this study shows a causal effect of verbal threat messages provided by parents only on child subjective fear and highlightsthe need for further research on the verbal transmission of childhood social fears in the context of family, by examining these processes in various social situations, age groups, and fear indices.Show less
Attentional biases seem to perpetuate social anxiety by locking focus onto threat-related information. The classical dot-probe task has been the golden standard of measuring selective attention...Show moreAttentional biases seem to perpetuate social anxiety by locking focus onto threat-related information. The classical dot-probe task has been the golden standard of measuring selective attention based on variations in reaction times (RT) due to bottom-up saliency. In recent decades, concerns have grown over this task's reliability, partly due to statistical concerns over its indexing method and because it fails to account for top-down behavioral strategies that circumvent bottom-up attentional capture. This pilot study tested the novel Parallel Target Attention Task (PATAT) assessing attentional biases towards novel stimuli, as it aims to overcome these shortcomings. The task measured participant’s responses to two target stimuli presented in proximity to a familiar and a novel stimulus. An attentional bias was then calculated as a straightforward sum of participant responses to novel stimuli. By contrasting images of faces and natural scenes, we examined whether a bias for novelty is category specific. Last but not least, we investigated whether people who display higher levels of Behavioral Inhibition (BI), pay more attention to novel stimuli. The task was able to measure an attention bias toward novelty in the majority of participants but fell short on replicating a category-dependent bias. Also, contrary to our hypothesis that novel stimuli elicit more bottom-up attentional capture in such participants, data showed the opposite trend, consistent with the observation that such individuals generally avoid novel experiences. Theoretical and methodological implications of the results are discussed.Show less
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
Social anxiety is associated with expecting and experiencing more rejection. However, much is still unknown about learning to expect social feedback. 68 female participants engaged in the Social...Show moreSocial anxiety is associated with expecting and experiencing more rejection. However, much is still unknown about learning to expect social feedback. 68 female participants engaged in the Social Evaluative Learning through Feedback Profile task, based on which we mapped out cardiac and expectation markers of social anxiety. In this task, four peers differed in their probability of giving rejecting feedback (i.e., 85, 70, 30, and 15 %) on statements about the participant, and participants predict whether the peer will accept or reject them. To estimate learning, participants’ predictions are grouped based on the peer’s dominant response. Heart rate (HR) slowing is measured for each stimulus using interbeat intervals. We calculated high-frequency resting heart rate variability (HRV), and the Liebowitz social anxiety scale was used as a screener. Multilevel models predicted HR slowing, and learning to predict peer feedback. Our analysis shows that HR slowing after unexpected rejection decreases over the course of the experiment. For the most accepting peer, higher social anxiety is associated with more HR slowing for unexpected rejection, and less HR slowing for expected rejection. For the most rejecting peer, there seems to be an opposite effect. Classification of all peers became more accurate over time. We found a weak negative correlation between resting HRV and social anxiety. We conclude that there are slight differences in HR slowing associated with higher social anxiety. The current findings help practitioners understand cardiac and emotional responses to social learning based on feedback and can aid researchers’ understanding of social anxiety.Show less
Reinforcement learning allows people to maximize their gains by seeking rewards and minimize losses by avoiding punishments. However, the ability to appropriately learn from positive and negative...Show moreReinforcement learning allows people to maximize their gains by seeking rewards and minimize losses by avoiding punishments. However, the ability to appropriately learn from positive and negative feedback is altered in individuals with social anxiety, particularly dependent on the social context. While high socially anxious individuals are more responsive to negative compared to positive feedback in non-social contexts, there is a lack of consensus on their feedback learning pattern when being under social scrutiny. Our study investigated the relationship between different levels of social anxiety and learning from positive versus negative feedback in social versus non-social contexts by using the SELF-Symbol paradigm, a probabilistic learning task. Participants with different levels of subclinical social anxiety (N = 123) had to learn the differing probabilistic accuracy contingencies of Japanese symbols through negative and positive feedback. In the standard condition, participants were alone in a room, while in the social condition, participants were observed by an examiner. The results did not yield any significant findings, indicating no difference between different levels of subclinical social anxiety in learning more accurately from positive versus negative feedback in the non-social as compared to social condition. The results are discussed with reference to the continuous nature of social anxiety symptoms and the representativeness and research design of the current study. Addressing current limitations can lead to more hopeful future research and advancements in recognising social anxiety also in non-clinical samples.Show less
Online peer victimization, more commonly known as cyberbullying, is becoming more and more commonplace, with its effects yet to be fully discovered. The current study investigated whether online...Show moreOnline peer victimization, more commonly known as cyberbullying, is becoming more and more commonplace, with its effects yet to be fully discovered. The current study investigated whether online peer victimization would significantly predict positive and negative feedback learning in young adults. A moderation effect of social anxiety was also investigated. Moreover, differences between subscales 'direct' and 'indirect' online peer victimization were investigated. Relations between online peer victimization and social anxiety and between social anxiety and feedback learning were found in prior research and therefore a relation between online peer victimization and feedback learning was expected. Participants were gathered from Leiden University and its surroundings and were a priori screened for Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) scores. This experiment was part of a larger study. For the present study, the Multidimensional Offline and Online Peer Victimization (MOOPV) questionnaire and the LSAS questionnaire were used. A feedback learning paradigm was conducted, measuring the tendency to either learn from positive or negative feedback. Results show no relation between online peer victimization and feedback learning. A significant interaction effect was found for 'indirect' online peer victimization and moderator social anxiety. 'Indirect' online peer victimization was only able to predict feedback learning for people with high social anxiety. The results of this study highlight the importance of educating teachers and students on the effects of 'indirect' online peer victimization. Future research should focus on identifying underlying reasons for the difference between 'direct' and 'indirect' online peer victimization. Moreover, the interaction effect should be taken into consideration in treatment of social anxiety, as online peer victimization causes socially anxious individuals to learn more from negative feedback.Show less
For the healthy development of a child parental bonding plays a crucial role. However, parental overprotection can be seen as a risk factor in the development of social anxiety. Moreover, how you...Show moreFor the healthy development of a child parental bonding plays a crucial role. However, parental overprotection can be seen as a risk factor in the development of social anxiety. Moreover, how you learn from and process feedback can be seen as an important factor in the development of social anxiety. Because social anxiety has a huge impact on daily life, it is important to investigate its underlying mechanisms and risk factors. The goal of the present study is to investigate the relationship between parental overprotection and feedback learning with social anxiety as a mediating factor. Participants (N = 118) performed the SELF-symbol paradigm, a well-validated probabilistic learning task. This task examined the degree to which participants learned better from negative versus positive feedback. Social anxiety was measured using the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale and overprotection was measured using the Parental Bonding Instrument. No significant relationships were found between parental overprotection and feedback learning, parental overprotection and social anxiety, and social anxiety and feedback learning. Furthermore, we can assume no mediation of social anxiety in the relationship between parental overprotection and feedback learning did occur. The present study is a start in further research on the underlying mechanisms between parental overprotection, feedback learning and social anxiety while taking into account the limitations of the current research.Show less
Peer victimization can lead to depression, social anxiety, and suicide. Online peer victimization is an upcoming phenomenon. In this study, the relationship between the experience of online and...Show morePeer victimization can lead to depression, social anxiety, and suicide. Online peer victimization is an upcoming phenomenon. In this study, the relationship between the experience of online and offline peer victimization and learning from negative social feedback was investigated. It was expected that online and offline peer victimization would predict better negative social learning. This could be a possible pathway between peer victimization and depression and social anxiety. The Multidimensional Offline and Online Peer Victimization Scale (MOOPV) was used to measure the experience of online and offline peer victimization during the past six months. The Self profile task was used to measure negative social learning. Regression analyses were performed with 149 students aged between 18 and 29 (mean age = 20.41), but no significant effects were found. Therefore, it is possible that peer victimization is not a predictor of negative social learning. An alternative explanation for the fact that no effect was measured could be the few participants in this sample who have experienced offline or online peer victimization during the last six months before the study. Furthermore, the simplified way in which negative social learning was measured may have caused no effect was found. Exploratively, a weak negative correlation was found between whether someone had experienced offline peer victimization and how someone feels about themselves. In all cases, more research is needed on the path of online and offline peer victimization to depression and social anxiety to develop more effective treatment approaches.Show less
Adolescence is a period of many changes, a shift in focus appears from parents to peers. A greater focus on peer relationships can bring many insecurities. Therefore, adolescence is a period of...Show moreAdolescence is a period of many changes, a shift in focus appears from parents to peers. A greater focus on peer relationships can bring many insecurities. Therefore, adolescence is a period of heightened risk for the development of mental health problems. Using economic behavioural games, the social behaviour of others can be predicted by recognising the underlying motivations of others. The underlying motivations researched in this study are greediness and risk aversion. The aim of the study was to learn if social anxiety traits influenced the prediction of the social behaviour of others. It was investigated if a higher level of social anxiety influenced the accuracy of the predictions, based on greedy and risk averse motivations, of participants. In addition, the effects of age and motivation may influence the accuracy of the predictions of participants. No significant results were found during the study. Since the study is conducted with a small sample size, this may have affected the statistical power. Also, participants were not specifically recruited for the requirement of social anxiety. However, the results suggested a relation between age and the number of accurate predictions. Furthermore, the results suggested a relation between the level of social anxiety and motivation. These results should be further investigated in future research. To conclude, this study contributes to a better understanding of social anxiety. The ability of being able to predict when individuals are prosocial or not may prevent the onset of mental health disorders.Show less
Introduction. Socially anxious individuals express fear or anxiety in circumstances in which others might judge them. It has been suggested that social anxiety affects various voice characteristics...Show moreIntroduction. Socially anxious individuals express fear or anxiety in circumstances in which others might judge them. It has been suggested that social anxiety affects various voice characteristics, such as pitch and speech intensity, however the relationship between social anxiety and speech patterns has rarely been examined in actual social interactions (face-to-face setting). This study aimed to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and speech patterns, operationalized as pitch and speech intensity; and further assess the influence of social partners’ gaze direction (direct versus averted gaze) on the relationship. Methods. Twenty-six females (Mage = 21) were engaged in a face-to-face getting-acquainted conversation with a female confederate. While in conversation, participants and confederate took turns discussing general topics. The confederate’s gaze direction (direct versus averted) was manipulated. Participants’ social anxiety levels were measured by the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, and Tobii eye-tracking glasses recorded auditory data. Vocal pitch and speech intensity were extracted with PRAAT. Results. The results reveal a significant relationship between social anxiety and speech intensity, whereby high socially anxious individuals spoke more quietly. There was no association between social anxiety and pitch. Confederates’ gaze direction did not influence the relationship between social anxiety and speech patterns. Conclusion. The findings illustrate social anxiety’s effects on speech intensity, regardless of the influence of a social partner’s gaze direction. Moreover, the outcome implies that pitch might be sensitive and closely tied to various situational factors. This underlines the extent of social anxiety’s influence on various human facets and social settings.Show less
Social performance feedback received from others influences self-feelings and self-evaluations. Recent work provides initial evidence that socially anxious individuals, characterized by a...Show moreSocial performance feedback received from others influences self-feelings and self-evaluations. Recent work provides initial evidence that socially anxious individuals, characterized by a consistent negative self-view, show a negative bias for learning selfrelated information. A social speech task paradigm and a computational model were used to assess the hypothesis of whether a negative social learning bias regarding self-evaluation and self-feelings is present in subclinical socially anxious people. 106 young adults gave a speech in front of 3 judges from whom they received either positive or negative performance feedback. The feedback from the judges was simultaneously presented with the participants' own self-rating on their performance. Immediately after viewing both feedbacks, participants rated how they felt about themselves on a VAS scale. Affective Updating and an adapted Rescorla-Wagner learning model were used to assess how people changed their self-feelings over time in response to received feedback valence. Additionally, the study investigated the association between perfectionism, social anxiety and negative social feedback. Given that perfectionism is strongly related to both social anxiety and social rejection, we tested whether individuals with elevated levels of social anxiety and perfectionism would adjust their selffeelings stronger towards negative social feedback. Results did not indicate a negative social learning bias on self-feelings after receiving negative social feedback in socially anxious individuals. Also, perfectionism was not found to be a moderator between social anxiety and negative social feedback. Overall, results were non-significant, however, our study lies the groundwork and highlights the importance of further studies in this field.Show less
Despite the well-established association between over-controlling and rejecting parenting and offspring social anxiety, little research has examined parental effects on cognitive biases associated...Show moreDespite the well-established association between over-controlling and rejecting parenting and offspring social anxiety, little research has examined parental effects on cognitive biases associated with social anxiety. Social evaluation expectancy and learning biases can impede effective social interaction and contribute to the development and maintenance of social anxiety. The aim of this study was to investigate how parental care and control, or the combination of maternal control and paternal care, as perceived retrospectively by young adults, affect pre-exposure social evaluation expectancy and sensitivity to learn from positive, ambiguous and negative feedback about the self. One hundred nine university students (mean age = 20.5 years) participated in a reinforcement learning task, in which they estimated pre-task social acceptance from four peer strangers and predicted if these peers would give them positive/negative feedback on their self-profile statements, based on previous feedback from each peer. A series of multiple regression analyses were employed. Results showed that neither perceived parental care and control, nor the combination of maternal control and paternal care, were predictive of social acceptance expectancy or the learning rate of positive, ambiguous and negative self-related feedback of young adults. There was only a tendency for maternal overprotection to be associated with a negative learning bias of ambiguous social feedback. These findings suggest that perceived low parental care and high parental control does not affect offspring social anxiety by making young adults less likely to hold a positive self-referential bias or more likely to hold a negative self-referential bias before and during a social interaction.Show less
Models on social anxiety disorder, such as the Cognitive Behavioral Model by Rapee and Heimberg (1997) suggested that maladaptive attentional processes are strongly involved in the disorder’s...Show moreModels on social anxiety disorder, such as the Cognitive Behavioral Model by Rapee and Heimberg (1997) suggested that maladaptive attentional processes are strongly involved in the disorder’s etiology and maintenance. The current study aimed to build upon recent findings in highly socially anxious individuals by testing a non-clinical population for a positive relation between the attentional bias towards angry faces and social anxiety trait levels. Additionally, attentional biases to other emotional facial expressions (i.e., angry, happy, sad, and fearful) were explored for their relationship with social anxiety trait levels, as was the influence of context on the relationship between the attentional bias towards angry faces and social anxiety trait levels. 104 healthy participants completed the dot-probe task showing an emotional facial expression. This was done in in two natural settings (Apenheul or Night of Discoveries) and one lab setting. Results indicated a marginal significant trend of individuals with higher social anxiety trait levels also presenting stronger attentional biases towards angry faces. The additional exploratory investigations yielded no significant results. Based on the current results it was concluded that the relation between the attentional bias towards threat and social anxiety levels, which is quite consistently found in individuals with clinical levels of social anxiety, existed also in a weaker form in a healthy population, and might increase with higher social anxiety trait scores. This provides insight on how attentional biases might affect the general population’s behavior and how a potentially beneficial evolutionary function can turn dysfunctional in socially anxious individuals.Show less
Behavioral mimicry and pupil dilation have both been seen to have positive effects on liking and trust between people in social interactions. For people with social anxiety, however, this effect...Show moreBehavioral mimicry and pupil dilation have both been seen to have positive effects on liking and trust between people in social interactions. For people with social anxiety, however, this effect may be impaired due to their self-focused attention and fear of other’s judgments. We investigate the effects of pupil dilation mimicry on evaluation of and trust in virtual avatars in high and low socially anxious individuals. Participants interacted with six avatars who each told a story, during which the avatar’s pupil size was manipulated to dilate randomly or to mimic the participant’s pupil dilations. After each story, the participants answered questionnaires regarding liking and played an investment game to measure trust. Contrary to our predictions, the results yielded no between-group differences in the evaluation of- or trust in the avatars. The implications of this and the limitations to our study are discussed, and we offer recommendations for future research.Show less
Social anxiety (SA) is found to be highly co-prevalent for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both are characterized by attentional abnormalities in emotional processing. Previous...Show moreSocial anxiety (SA) is found to be highly co-prevalent for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both are characterized by attentional abnormalities in emotional processing. Previous research has shown a significant bias towards angry faces for individuals in both groups. This study aims to investigate the co-prevalence between SA and ASD traits in a non-clinical sample, and how these trait dimensions relate to an attentional bias (AB) towards angry faces. We want to investigate whether SA traits moderate the relationship between ASD traits and the AB towards threatening stimuli. A dot-probe paradigm and self-report questionnaires were used. The results suggest an overlap of characteristics of SA and ASD on trait levels in a non-clinical population. There was significant bias towards angry faces independent of SA and ASD traits. No significant link between the SA and ASD traits and the attentional bias was found and the relationship between ASD traits and the AB towards angry faces was independent of SA trait scores. These results could indicate that in comparison to clinical groups, individuals at lower levels of SA are able to regulate the attentional bias more easily or that the emotional processing for individuals with ASD traits does not reach the hypo- or hyper-arousal. We suggest further exploration of the AB at various points of the spectrum for SA, as well as for clinical groups with ASD. We recommend further investigation on the difference between the AB and disengagement index, in line with recent literature on SA.Show less
