Attentional biases in high social anxiety using a flanker task

•We tested attentional bias in social anxiety for emotional targets and distractors.•Socially anxious individuals were not biased toward negative targets.•Socially anxious individuals were biased toward negative distractors.•Participants generally responded faster to positive target faces.•The results support attention control theory and suggest impaired inhibition control in HSA.

Background and objectivesThe existence of threat-related attentional bias has been well supported in social anxiety research. However, most previous studies investigated separately attentional bias toward targets or distractors. This study examined the selective attention of socially anxious individuals in the presence of both emotional targets and distractors.MethodsParticipants with high vs. low social anxiety (HSA vs. LSA) took part in a modified flanker task. Participants initially focused on the center of the screen, and then were required to identify the emotion of the central face (target) regardless of the flanking faces (distractors).ResultsThe response times (RTs) of the HSA and LSA groups did not differ significantly when responding to different central faces (targets), but the HSA group responded more slowly to central faces when the flankers (distractors) were negative faces as opposed to positive or neutral.LimitationsThe depression levels of participants in this non-clinical sample were not controlled.ConclusionThe results support attention control theory and suggest impaired inhibition control in HSA..