Fear of negative evaluation and attentional bias for facial expressions : an event-related study

Numerous studies have shown an exacerbation of attentional bias towards threat in anxiety states. However, the cognitive mechanisms responsible for these attentional biases remain largely unknown and the authors outline the need to distinguish the processes of hypervigilance, and avoidance of disengagement. We adapted a dot-probe paradigm to record behavioral and electrophysiological responses in 26 participants reporting high or low fear of evaluation, which is a major component of social anxiety. Pairs of faces including a neutral and an emotional face (displaying anger, fear, disgust, or happiness) were presented during 200 ms and then replaced by a neutral target to discriminate. Our results show that anxious participants are characterized by increased P1 in response to pairs of faces, regardless the emotional expression included in the pair. They also showed an increased P2 in response to angry-neutral pairs selectively. Finally, the P1 response to targets was enhanced when replacing emotional faces, whereas non-anxious subjects showed no difference between the two conditions. These results indicate an early hypervigilance to face stimuli, coupled with difficulty to disengage from threat and sustained attention to emotional stimuli, and are discussed within the framework of current models of anxiety and psychopathology