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Anxiety and orienting of gaze to angry and fearful faces

Anxiety and orienting of gaze to angry and fearful faces
Anxiety and orienting of gaze to angry and fearful faces
Neuroscience research indicates that individual differences in anxiety may be attributable to a neural system for threat-processing, involving the amygdala, which modulates attentional vigilance, and which is more sensitive to fearful than angry faces. Complementary cognitive studies indicate that high-anxious individuals show enhanced visuospatial orienting towards angry faces, but it is unclear whether fearful faces elicit a similar attentional bias. This study compared biases in initial orienting of gaze to fearful and angry faces, which varied in emotional intensity, in high- and low-anxious individuals. Gaze was monitored while participants viewed a series of face-pairs. Results showed that fearful and angry faces elicited similar attentional biases. High-anxious individuals were more likely to direct gaze at intense negative facial expressions, than low-anxious individuals, whereas the groups did not differ in orienting to mild negative expressions. Implications of the findings for research into the neural and cognitive bases of emotion processing are discussed.
anxiety, angry faces, fearful faces, attentional bias, eye movements
0301-0511
163-169
Mogg, Karin
5f1474af-85f5-4fd3-8eb6-0371be848e30
Garner, Matthew
3221c5b3-b951-4fec-b456-ec449e4ce072
Bradley, Brendan P.
bdacaa6c-528b-4086-9448-27ebfe463514
Mogg, Karin
5f1474af-85f5-4fd3-8eb6-0371be848e30
Garner, Matthew
3221c5b3-b951-4fec-b456-ec449e4ce072
Bradley, Brendan P.
bdacaa6c-528b-4086-9448-27ebfe463514

Mogg, Karin, Garner, Matthew and Bradley, Brendan P. (2007) Anxiety and orienting of gaze to angry and fearful faces. Biological Psychology, 76 (3), 163-169. (doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2007.07.005). (PMID:17764810)

Record type: Article

Abstract

Neuroscience research indicates that individual differences in anxiety may be attributable to a neural system for threat-processing, involving the amygdala, which modulates attentional vigilance, and which is more sensitive to fearful than angry faces. Complementary cognitive studies indicate that high-anxious individuals show enhanced visuospatial orienting towards angry faces, but it is unclear whether fearful faces elicit a similar attentional bias. This study compared biases in initial orienting of gaze to fearful and angry faces, which varied in emotional intensity, in high- and low-anxious individuals. Gaze was monitored while participants viewed a series of face-pairs. Results showed that fearful and angry faces elicited similar attentional biases. High-anxious individuals were more likely to direct gaze at intense negative facial expressions, than low-anxious individuals, whereas the groups did not differ in orienting to mild negative expressions. Implications of the findings for research into the neural and cognitive bases of emotion processing are discussed.

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Published date: October 2007
Keywords: anxiety, angry faces, fearful faces, attentional bias, eye movements

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 47062
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/47062
ISSN: 0301-0511
PURE UUID: ea2ea216-0b90-4f3a-8c48-0e43f1976324
ORCID for Matthew Garner: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9481-2226
ORCID for Brendan P. Bradley: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2801-4271

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 25 Jul 2007
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 03:24

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