Internal and External Attentional Biases in Social Anxiety: The Effect of Effortful Control

dc.contributor.authorWhitmore, Maria J.en
dc.contributor.committeechairOllendick, Thomas H.en
dc.contributor.committeememberScarpa, Angelaen
dc.contributor.committeememberFriedman, Bruce H.en
dc.contributor.departmentPsychologyen
dc.date.accessioned2014-03-14T21:35:27Zen
dc.date.adate2006-06-23en
dc.date.available2014-03-14T21:35:27Zen
dc.date.issued2006-04-21en
dc.date.rdate2009-06-23en
dc.date.sdate2006-05-04en
dc.description.abstractTwo cognitive processes have been proposed to play a role in social anxiety: self-focused attention and threat perception bias. Mansell, Clark, and Ehlers (2003) devised a novel dot-probe paradigm to simultaneously measure on-line attention to internal and external events among socially anxious adults. Their results indicated that high speech anxious individuals show an internal attention bias specific to a social threat condition. They did not find any differences between groups in a no-threat condition; however, the researchers did not account for processes of effortful control of attention. The current study replicated the Mansell et al. study with an added condition to control for effortful processes of attention. Fifty young adults (mean age = 19.8) were assessed using a self-report measure of social anxiety, as well as the Mansell et al. dot-probe paradigm. Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to a brief (250ms) stimulus presentation time with the other half to a 25 second condition, as used by Mansell et al. In addition, subjects were randomly assigned to social threat and non-threat conditions. A three-way interaction of anxiety x threat x length of stimulus presentation was predicted, such that socially anxious individuals would show an external attention bias when not under social threat (threat perception bias). However, under threat, it was hypothesized that anxious individuals would shift their attention internally (self-focused attention). Results of the current study did not support the hypothesized interaction, and provided only equivocal evidence for both self-focused attention and threat perception bias.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Scienceen
dc.identifier.otheretd-05042006-135604en
dc.identifier.sourceurlhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05042006-135604/en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/42447en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.relation.haspartthesisrevisedmw.pdfen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectattentionen
dc.subjectexecutive functioningen
dc.subjectsocial anxietyen
dc.titleInternal and External Attentional Biases in Social Anxiety: The Effect of Effortful Controlen
dc.typeThesisen
thesis.degree.disciplinePsychologyen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Scienceen

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