Hypervigilance to dynamic and static facial expressions in social anxiety: an eye-tracking investigation.

Research has shown attentional
bias and hypervigilance in individuals with social anxiety (SA) during the
observation of emotional facial expressions, particularly with static stimuli
such as pictures or schematic faces. Here, we investigated the recognition of
dynamic and static facial expressions and eye tracking correlates in volunteers
with symptoms of SA and controls. Fifty-six volunteers took part in the study,
divided into a control group (CG) with low SA and a group with symptoms of SA
(SAG). The stimuli were emotional faces of joy, disgust, anger, and sadness presented
in four emotional intensities (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) presented statically
(pictures) and dynamically (short movies from a neutral expression to the
emotional expression). During the emotion recognition task, binocular eye
movements were registered, and the number and duration of eye fixations were
analyzed. Repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed that the SAG had a higher recognition
rate only for low-intensity (25%) sadness. Both groups had a larger number of
fixations for static than dynamic stimuli, as well as longer fixations for
dynamic than static stimuli. Significant differences between groups were
observed with dynamic stimuli, since the SAG presented larger number of
fixations and shorter durations than the CG. Thus, our results revealed a
negative bias towards sadness and a hypervigilance (more fixations with faster
durations) pattern during the evaluation of emotional faces.