Individuals with social phobia are biased to become aware of negative faces |
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| Authors: | John Eastwood Daniel Smile Jonathan Oakman Peter Farvolden Michael van Ameringen Catherine Mancini |
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| Institution: | 1. York University, Ontario, Canada;2. University of British Columbia, Canada;3. University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada;4. Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Ontario, Canada;5. McMaster University, Ontario, Canada |
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| Abstract: | To evaluate whether individuals with social phobia are biased to become aware of negative faces participants searched visual displays containing varying number of neutral face distractors for the location of positive and negative faces. Individuals with social phobia had shallower search slopes for locating negative compared to positive faces, suggesting that they are biased to become aware of negative faces more readily than they become aware of positive faces. A similar bias was found for individuals with panic disorder; but no such bias was found either for individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder or for control participants. The findings illustrate the importance of considering the characteristics of participants in the study of human attention. |
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