ATTENTION BIASES AND SOCIAL SKILLS IN YOUTH WITH ANXIETY

Abstract

Background: While attentional biases towards negative stimuli have previously been linked to the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders, attentional biases in anxiety remain understudied using dynamic social videos. Moreover, while many have proposed that negative attentional biases may lower the ability to be successful in social situations, the cognitive mechanisms behind the links between anxiety, attentional bias, and interpersonal competence remain unclear. Objective: The purposes of this study were to use modern eye-tracking equipment and novel dynamic stimuli to further investigate negative attentional biases in emerging adults with anxiety, and to examine links with social competence. Methods: Non-clinical participants (N = 62; mean age = 20.44 years) were recruited and completed validated questionnaires regarding their anxiety symptoms and interpersonal competence in this cross-sectional study. Participants then completed a free-viewing task on a desktop computer. The procedure involved viewing 30-second video clips from TV shows and movies while having their eye movements tracked using the Eyelink 1000 Plus. The video clips were shown in pairs depending on their emotional content (i.e., positive-neutral, negative-neutral, and positive-negative) on a split screen without audio. Time to first fixation, dwell time, and the number of fixations were used as outcome variables in separate linear mixed-effect models to determine the effect of anxiety and pairing type on attentional biases. Significant interactions were then probed further and stratified by pairings to assess attentional biases within each pairing combination. Results: Overall, participants fixated more quickly on emotional videos (i.e., positive and negative) over neutral ones, with anxious participants orienting their gaze faster to the videos, regardless of content, in comparison to their healthy peers. Moreover, as anxiety symptoms increased, time spent gazing at negative videos increased in negative-neutral pairings, highlighting that emerging adults with increased anxiety symptoms may show a negative attention bias when viewing social interactions. Interestingly, this effect was not present when they were shown positive-negative pairings. In general, emerging adults spent more time gazing at positive videos over neutral videos in positive-neutral pairings, and this was not moderated by anxiety level. Lastly, the relationship between anxiety and lower interpersonal competence was not mediated by negative attentional biases. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that social videos are feasible stimuli in attention research and should be considered for future studies since they are more reflective of real-life scenarios. Lastly, this research lays the foundation to directly help emerging adults by guiding therapeutic techniques, such as attentional bias modification training tasks, that may help those suffering from anxiety.