Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 12, 2026

Social Isolation Model: A Noninvasive Rodent Model of Stress and Anxiety
Published on: November 11, 2022
Autistic traits and social anxiety predict differential performance on social cognitive tasks in typically developing
Cheryl L Dickter1, Joshua A Burk1, Katarina Fleckenstein1
1Psychological Sciences, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, United States of America.
Abstract:
The current work examined the unique contribution that autistic traits and social anxiety have on tasks examining attention and emotion processing. In Study 1, 119 typically-developing college students completed a flanker task assessing the control of attention to target faces and away from distracting faces during emotion identification. In Study 2, 208 typically-developing college students performed a visual search task which required identification of whether a series of 8 or 16 emotional faces depicted the same or different emotions. Participants with more self-reported autistic traits performed more slowly on the flanker task in Study 1 than those with fewer autistic traits when stimuli depicted complex emotions. In Study 2, participants higher in social anxiety performed less accurately on trials showing all complex faces; participants with autistic traits showed no differences. These studies suggest that traits related to autism and to social anxiety differentially impact social cognitive processing.
More Related Videos
12:48Investigating Social Cognition in Infants and Adults Using Dense Array Electroencephalography dEEG
Published on: June 27, 2011
11:13The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
Related Concept Videos
Social Anxiety Disorder
The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison
Social Facilitation
Social Proof
Social Scripts
Social Traps