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Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
Published on: October 19, 2014
Internal and external attention in speech anxiety
Désirée D Deiters1, Stephan Stevens, Christiane Hermann
1University of Cologne, Germany.
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
|November 29, 2012
Summary
Individuals with speech anxiety show heightened self-focused attention before a speech task. This self-focused attention was not evident during the actual speech, suggesting a context-dependent effect in social anxiety.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Cognitive models of social phobia suggest heightened self-focused attention.
- Previous research used dot probe and feedback tasks to study attention and internal cues.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate attentional processing during actual social situations.
- To measure attention to internal and external stimuli during anticipation and performance of a speech task.
Main Methods:
- Participants with and without speech anxiety performed a speech task.
- A novel paradigm simultaneously measured responses to internal (vibration) and external (LED) probes.
- Button presses indicated responses to probes during speech anticipation and delivery.
Main Results:
- Speech-anxious participants responded faster to internal probes during speech anticipation.
- No significant differences in probe responses were found during the speech itself.
Conclusions:
- Self-focused attention plays a key role in anticipatory social anxiety.
- Findings offer a new perspective on attention dynamics in social situations.
- Results are specific to individuals with speech anxiety.
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