Amit Lazarov1, Dana Basel2, Sarah Dolan3, Daniel G Dillon4, Diego A Pizzagalli5, Franklin R Schneier6. 1. School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, NY, USA. Electronic address: amitlaza@post.tau.ac.il. 2. School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. 3. New York State Psychiatric Institute, NY, USA. 4. Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research at McLean Hospital, MA, USA; Harvard Medical School, MA, USA. 5. Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research at McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA, McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, MA, USA, Harvard Medical School, MA, USA. 6. New York State Psychiatric Institute and Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, NY, USA.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Threat-related attention bias has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of social anxiety disorder (SAD), with attentional research increasingly using eye-tracking methodology to overcome the poor psychometric properties of response-time-based tasks and measures. Yet, extant eye-tracking research in social anxiety has mostly failed to report on psychometrics and attempts to replicate past results are rare. Therefore, we attempted to replicate a previously published eye-tracking study of gaze patterns in socially anxious and nonanxious participants as they viewed social threatening and neutral faces, while also exploring the psychometric properties of the attentional measures used. METHODS: Gaze was monitored as participants freely viewed 60 different matrices comprised of eight socially-threatening and eight neutral faces, presented for 6000 ms each. Gaze patterns directed at threat and neutral areas of interest (AOIs) were compared by group. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were also evaluated. RESULTS: Relative to healthy controls, socially anxious patients dwelled significantly longer on threat faces, replicating prior findings with the same task. Internal consistency of total dwell time on threat and neutral AOIs was high, and two-week test-retest reliability was acceptable. LIMITATIONS: Test-retest reliability was only examined for the control group, which had a small sample size. CONCLUSION: Increased dwell time on socially threatening stimuli is a reliable, stable, and generalizable measure of attentional bias in adults with social anxiety.
BACKGROUND: Threat-related attention bias has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of social anxiety disorder (SAD), with attentional research increasingly using eye-tracking methodology to overcome the poor psychometric properties of response-time-based tasks and measures. Yet, extant eye-tracking research in social anxiety has mostly failed to report on psychometrics and attempts to replicate past results are rare. Therefore, we attempted to replicate a previously published eye-tracking study of gaze patterns in socially anxious and nonanxious participants as they viewed social threatening and neutral faces, while also exploring the psychometric properties of the attentional measures used. METHODS: Gaze was monitored as participants freely viewed 60 different matrices comprised of eight socially-threatening and eight neutral faces, presented for 6000 ms each. Gaze patterns directed at threat and neutral areas of interest (AOIs) were compared by group. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were also evaluated. RESULTS: Relative to healthy controls, socially anxious patients dwelled significantly longer on threat faces, replicating prior findings with the same task. Internal consistency of total dwell time on threat and neutral AOIs was high, and two-week test-retest reliability was acceptable. LIMITATIONS: Test-retest reliability was only examined for the control group, which had a small sample size. CONCLUSION: Increased dwell time on socially threatening stimuli is a reliable, stable, and generalizable measure of attentional bias in adults with social anxiety.
Authors: Douglas S Mennin; David M Fresco; Richard G Heimberg; Franklin R Schneier; Sharon O Davies; Michael R Liebowitz Journal: J Anxiety Disord Date: 2002
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Authors: Akina Umemoto; Sally L Cole; Grace O Allison; Sarah Dolan; Amit Lazarov; Randy P Auerbach; Franklin Schneier Journal: J Psychiatr Res Date: 2021-09-02 Impact factor: 4.791