Social anxiety does not impair attention inhibition: An emotion anti-saccade task

Abstract

Background and objectives: Attention avoidance and attention vigilance are two typical attentional biases in individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Attention inhibition is a type of attention control, which may be the key factor affecting attention vigilance and attention avoidance. However, previous studies have not examined the difference between the attention inhibition in individuals with SAD and healthy controls.

Methods: To further explore this question, the current study used the single anti-saccade task with emotional facial stimuli to assess attention inhibition in 27 individuals with SAD and 22 healthy controls.

Results: Regardless of the emotional valence of the facial stimuli, error rates in the social anxiety group were lower than that of the healthy control group, but there was no significant group difference in the saccade latency.

Limitations: This research only examined the attentional inhibition process highly related to attention avoidance and attention vigilance. Future research may benefit from adopting different research paradigms for more robust and generalizable conclusions.

Conclusions: Results suggest that individuals with SAD have better attention inhibition abilities than healthy control. Such enhanced attention inhibition may underlie their avoidance of threatening social cues.

Keywords: Anti-Saccade task; Attention avoidance; Attention inhibition; Attention vigilance; Social anxiety.