Der Einfluss von emotionalem Gesichtsausdruck und Blickkontakt auf

Abstract 9
Abstract
In three studies, the influence of facial expressions and perceived gaze direction on visual
attention in social anxiety was investigated. In studies 1 & 2, it was tested whether high socially
anxious persons (HSA) show a hypervigilance-avoidance pattern of attentional deployment
in response to angry faces. In study 3, the gaze behaviour and the physiological arousal
in response to averted or direct gaze was investigated in socially anxious participants.
In study 1, the experimental design to investigate visual attention through infra-red eye
tracking was successfully established. Watching two simultaneously presented faces (emotional
vs. neutral), high socially anxious persons showed an initial attentional bias toward
emotional (angry and happy) faces, which was further modulated by the sex of the shown
face. HSA initially looked more frequently at male angry and female happy faces. Furthermore,
they tended to look less long at emotional facial expressions between 1 to 1.5 s after
picture onset, which may indicate avoidance of emotional facial expressions.
In study 2, in addition to this passive viewing task, participants had to perform an emotional
antisaccade task, which was developed to investigate the attentional control of participants in
response to social stimuli. Furthermore, the selection of participants was based on their scores
in a questionnaire on social anxiety which were obtained in a screening procedure before the
experiment. In the passive viewing task, HSA showed an initial attentional bias towards
happy facial expressions. In the antisaccade task, HSA made more errors to perform a correct
antisaccade in response to all facial expressions indicating an impaired inhibition of the reflexive
orienting to social stimuli. These findings point at an attentional bias for happy facial
expressions, which consequently seems to necessitate a modification of the hypervigilanceavoidance
hypothesis. The results of the antisaccade task may indicate a diminished attentional
control in socially anxious persons.
In study 3, dynamic videos of faces were used to investigate the avoidance behaviour of socially
anxious participants in response to direct gaze. In addition, heart rate (HR) and skin
conductance responses (SCR) were obtained to measure autonomic arousal. Similar to study
2, three groups were selected based on their scores in a questionnaire on social anxiety obtained
in a screening procedure. HSA showed an enhanced HR acceleration in response to
direct gaze, which indicates a phobic defensive reaction. However, direct gaze was not
avoided by HSA as the eye tracking data revealed.