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Updated: May 1, 2026

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
Published on: October 19, 2014
Threat processing in generalized social phobia: an investigation of interpretation biases in ambiguous facial affect
Aiste Jusyte1, Michael Schönenberg2
1Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Schleichstr. 4, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany; LEAD Graduate School, University of Tübingen, Germany.
Abstract:
Facial affect is one of the most important information sources during the course of social interactions, but it is susceptible to distortion due to the complex and dynamic nature. Socially anxious individuals have been shown to exhibit alterations in the processing of social information, such as an attentional and interpretative bias toward threatening information. This may be one of the key factors contributing to the development and maintenance of anxious psychopathology. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether a threat-related interpretation bias is evident for ambiguous facial stimuli in a population of individuals with a generalized Social Anxiety Disorder (gSAD) as compared to healthy controls. Participants judged ambiguous happy/fearful, angry/fearful and angry/happy blends varying in intensity and rated the predominant affective expression. The results obtained in this study do not indicate that gSAD is associated with a biased interpretation of ambiguous facial affect.
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