Processing of Task-Irrelevant Natural Scenes in Social Anxiety

Moriya Jun

Tanno Yoshihiko

Acta Psychologica

In this study, by manipulating perceptual load, we investigated whether socially anxious people process task-irrelevant, non-emotional, natural scenes. When attention was directed to letters and perceptual load was low, task-irrelevant natural scenes were processed, as evidenced by repetition priming effects, in both high and low socially anxious people. In the high perceptual load condition, repetition-priming effects decreased in participants with low social anxiety, but not in those with high social anxiety. The results were the same when attention was directed to pictures of animals: even in the high perceptual load condition, high socially anxious participants processed task-irrelevant natural scenes, as evidenced by flanker effects. However, when attention was directed to pictures of people, task-irrelevant natural scenes were not processed by participants in either anxiety group, regardless of perceptual load. These results suggest that high socially anxious individuals could not inhibit task-irrelevant natural scenes under conditions of high perceptual load, except when attention was focused on people.

social anxiety

perceptual load

natural scene

attentional control

repetition priming

flanker task

Psychology [ 140 ]

eng

Elsevier B.V.

© 2011. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

This is not the published version. Please cite only the published version. この論文は出版社版でありません。引用の際には出版社版をご確認ご利用ください。

[ISSN] 0001-6918

[ISSN] 1873-6297

[DOI] 10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.05.019

[PMID] 21696695

[DOI] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.05.019