Attentional Biases to Internal and External Sources of Potential Threat in Social Anxiety

Pineles, Suzanne L.
Mineka, Susan

¹Department of Psychology, Northwestern University.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Suzanne L. Pineles, National Center for PTSD, Women's Health Sciences Division (116B-3), Veteran's Affairs Boston Healthcare System, 150 South Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02130. E-mail: [email protected].

This research was partially supported by a Dissertation Year Fellowship and a Dissertation Year Grant by the University Research Grants Committee at Northwestern University granted to Suzanne L. Pineles. This article is based on research conducted by Suzanne L. Pineles in partial fulfillment of the requirements for her doctoral dissertation.

We thank Rick Zinbarg, Marcia Grabowecky, Galen Bodenhausen, and Iftah Yovel for their comments and contributions to this research. We are also grateful to Thomas Powers, Amanda Moates, Kim Baglien, Anita Kalhan, and Julie Landa for their help in collecting data for this experiment.

Received Date: January 21, 2004; Revised Date: July 16, 2004; Accepted Date: July 19, 2004

Journal of Abnormal Psychology 114(2):p 314-318, May 2005.

proposed that a shift of attention inward toward interoceptive information is a central feature of social phobia. However, few studies have examined attentional biases toward internal physiological cues in social phobia. The current experiment assessed whether socially anxious individuals exhibit an attentional bias (a) toward cues for an internal source of potential threat (heart-rate information), (b) toward cues for an external source of potential threat (threatening faces) or (c) both. Ninety-one participants who were selected to form extreme groups based on a social anxiety screening measure performed a dot-probe task to assess location of attention. Results showed that socially anxious participants exhibited an attentional bias toward cues of internal, but not external, sources of potential threat.