Shyness and face scanning in children

Children's shyness and early stages of emotional face processing

The ability to detect and recognize facial emotions emerges in childhood and is important for understanding social cues, but we know relatively little about how individual differences in temperament may influence early emotional face processing. We used a sample of 419 children (Mage = 10.57 years, SD = 1.75; 48% female; 77% White) to examine the relation between temperamental shyness and early stages of emotional face processing (assessed using the P100 and N170 event-related potentials) during different facial expressions (neutral, anger, fear, and happy). We found that higher temperamental shyness was related to greater P100 activation to faces expressing anger and fear relative to neutral faces. Further, lower temperamental shyness was related to greater N170 activation to faces expressing anger and fear relative to neutral faces. There were no relations between temperamental shyness and neural activation to happy faces relative to neutral faces for P100 or N170, suggesting specificity to faces signaling threat. We discuss findings in the context of understanding the early processing of facial emotional display of threat among shy children.

Children's shyness and physiological arousal to a peer's social stress

Previous work has shown that children's shyness is related to personal anxiety during social stress, but we know little about how shyness is related to anxiety during a peer's social stress. Children (M_age  = 10.22 years, SD = 0.81, N = 62) were paired with an unfamiliar peer and engaged in a speech task while electrocardiography was recorded. We modeled changes in children's heart rate, a physiological correlate of anxiety, while they observed their peer prepare and deliver a speech. Results revealed that the observing child's shyness related to increases in their heart rate during their peer's preparation period, but modulation of this arousal was sensitive to the presenting peer's anxious behavior while delivering their speech. Specifically, if the presenting child displayed high levels of anxious behavior, the observing child's shyness was related to further increases in heart rate, but if the presenting child displayed low levels of anxious behavior, the observing child's shyness was related to decreases in heart rate from the preparation period. Shy children may experience physiological arousal to a peer's social stress but can regulate this arousal based on social cues from the peer, which may be due to heightened social threat detection and/or empathic anxiety.

Attention to faces in images is associated with personality and psychopathology

Humans show a robust tendency to look at faces in images, but also differ consistently in the strength of this attentional preference. Previous research remained inconclusive as to how a stronger face preference may be indicative of an individual's personality or clinical characteristics. Here we investigated face preferences in 120 participants (primarily drawn from a student population) who freely viewed photos in an internet browser showing a person in the context of a visually rich environment while attention was assessed using a cursor-based technique. Participants differed consistently in the strength of their face preference across images. A stronger preference for faces was correlated positively with openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness and empathizing and was correlated negatively with social anxiety, depression levels and alexithymia. Trait measures were linked through a strong common factor which was additionally correlated with face preference. We conclude that face preferences may be linked to personality traits and to psychopathology but that an attribution to a specific facet of psychopathology may not be warranted. Future research should investigate links between face preferences and personality features in more diverse samples and across differing social situations.

Longitudinal investigation of shyness and physiological vulnerability: Moderating influences of attention biases to threat and safety

Shyness has long been identified as a vulnerability factor to developing psychosocial problems, but there is heterogeneity in these observed outcomes. One potential factor underlying these relations is individual differences in threat sensitivity. Using a longitudinal design, we examined whether attentional biases toward social threat and safety measured during adulthood moderated the association between shyness measured in emerging adulthood (N = 83, n_female = 48; M_age = 23.56 years, SD_age = 1.09 years) and frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry at rest, a physiological index of vulnerability to psychopathology, measured nearly a decade later in adulthood (M_age = 31.68 years, SD_age = 2.27 years). We found that only biases to threat moderated the association between shyness and resting frontal EEG asymmetry longitudinally. In individuals who displayed relative vigilance to social threat, shyness was associated with greater relative right frontal EEG activity at rest (i.e., increased physiological vulnerability). These findings suggest that attentional biases to threat may play a role in understanding the relation between shyness and some known physiological vulnerabilities to psychopathology in adults.

Vigilant or avoidant? Children's temperamental shyness, patterns of gaze, and physiology during social threat

Temperamental shyness is characterized by fear, wariness, and the perception of threat in response to social novelty. Previous work has been inconsistent regarding attentional patterns to social threat among shy children, with evidence for both avoidance and vigilance. We examined relations between children's shyness and gaze aversion during the approach of a stranger (i.e., a context of social novelty), and tested whether these patterns of gaze moderated relations between shyness and autonomic reactivity and recovery. Participants included 152 typically-developing children (M_age  = 7.82 years, SD = 0.44 years) who had their respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) recorded during baseline, social novelty, and recovery. Children's shyness correlated with increases in self-reported nervousness from baseline to social novelty, providing support for perceived threat. Results revealed that children's proportion of gaze aversion from social novelty was related to shyness in a U-shape pattern such that both low levels of gaze aversion (i.e., attentional vigilance) and high levels of gaze aversion (i.e., attentional avoidance) were related to higher levels of shyness. Further, we found that children's shyness was directly related to decreases in RSA from baseline to social novelty, whereas quadratic gaze to social novelty moderated the relation between shyness and RSA recovery. Specifically, shyness was related to greater RSA recovery among children who exhibited attentional vigilance during the novel social interaction. Our findings provide support for both avoidance of, and vigilance to, social threat among different shy children, and these gaze strategies may be differentially related to physiological regulation during novel social encounters.

A systematic review of visual avoidance of faces in socially anxious individuals: Influence of severity, type of social situation, and development

Although visual avoidance of faces is a hallmark feature of social anxiety disorder (SAD) on clinical and theoretical grounds, empirical support is equivocal. This review aims to clarify under which conditions socially anxious individuals display visual avoidance of faces. Through a systematic search in Web of Science and PubMed up to March 2019 we identified 61 publications that met the inclusion criteria. We discuss the influence of three factors on the extent to which socially anxious individuals avoid looking at faces: (a) severity of social anxiety symptoms (diagnosed SAD versus High Social Anxiety levels in community samples [HSA] or related characteristics [Shyness, Fear of Negative Evaluation]), (b) three types of social situation (computer facial-viewing tasks, speaking tasks, social interactions), and (c) development (age-group). Adults with SAD exhibit visual avoidance across all three types of social situations, whereas adults with HSA exhibit visual avoidance in speaking and interaction tasks but not in facial-viewing tasks. The relatively few studies with children and adolescents suggest that visual avoidance emerges during adolescence. The findings are discussed in the context of cognitive-behavioral and skills-deficit models. Suggestions for future research include the need for developmental studies and more fine-grained analyses of specific areas of the face.

Social anxiety modulates visual exploration in real life - but not in the laboratory

In clinical reports, individuals high on social anxiety are often described to avoid gaze at other people, whereas several experimental studies employing images of persons yielded conflicting results. Here, we show that gaze avoidance crucially depends on the possibility of social interactions. We examined gaze behaviour in individuals with varying degrees of social anxiety in real‐life and in a second group of participants using a closely matched laboratory condition. In the real‐life situation, individuals with a higher degree of social anxiety had a reduced bias to look at near persons compared to individuals with a lower degree of social anxiety, while gaze behaviour in the laboratory group was not modulated by social anxiety. This effect was specific to social attention since there was no corresponding effect regarding fixations on objects. The presence of anxiety effects in real‐life but not in the laboratory condition, where participants do not expect to be evaluated by gazed‐at conspecifics, points to critical deficits of current laboratory research paradigms in eliciting authentic social attentional mechanisms, possibly leading to spurious results.

Trajectory of heart period to socioaffective threat in shy children

Although shyness is characterized by distinct psychophysiological correlates, we know very little about the development of these correlates. In this longitudinal study, we examined how children's shyness was associated with trajectories of heart period (HP) to socioaffective threat across four assessments spanning approximately 2 years. Children (M_age  = 6.39 years) viewed age-appropriate, socioaffective videos at each visit while having their HP measured concurrently. A growth curve analysis revealed that low shy children had a relatively lower HP at enrollment, but experienced increases in HP across visits, while high shy children exhibited relatively stable low HP across visits while viewing threat-related socioaffective video stimuli. These patterns did not exist for HP during resting baseline or HP to nonthreatening video stimuli. These findings suggest that longitudinal patterns of HP among shy children may reflect a stable, characteristic way of responding to socioaffective threat, and possibly a physiological mechanism underlying shyness in some children.

Anxiety symptoms and children's eye gaze during fear learning

BACKGROUND

The eye region of the face is particularly relevant for decoding threat-related signals, such as fear. However, it is unclear if gaze patterns to the eyes can be influenced by fear learning. Previous studies examining gaze patterns in adults find an association between anxiety and eye gaze avoidance, although no studies to date examine how associations between anxiety symptoms and eye-viewing patterns manifest in children. The current study examined the effects of learning and trait anxiety on eye gaze using a face-based fear conditioning task developed for use in children.

METHODS

Participants were 82 youth from a general population sample of twins (aged 9-13 years), exhibiting a range of anxiety symptoms. Participants underwent a fear conditioning paradigm where the conditioned stimuli (CS+) were two neutral faces, one of which was randomly selected to be paired with an aversive scream. Eye tracking, physiological, and subjective data were acquired. Children and parents reported their child's anxiety using the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders.

RESULTS

Conditioning influenced eye gaze patterns in that children looked longer and more frequently to the eye region of the CS+ than CS- face; this effect was present only during fear acquisition, not at baseline or extinction. Furthermore, consistent with past work in adults, anxiety symptoms were associated with eye gaze avoidance. Finally, gaze duration to the eye region mediated the effect of anxious traits on self-reported fear during acquisition.

CONCLUSIONS

Anxiety symptoms in children relate to face-viewing strategies deployed in the context of a fear learning experiment. This relationship may inform attempts to understand the relationship between pediatric anxiety symptoms and learning.

Gaze-Based Assessments of Vigilance and Avoidance in Social Anxiety: a Review

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

A broad base of research has sought to identify the biases in selective attention which characterize social anxiety, with the emergent use of eye tracking-based methods. This article seeks to provide a review of eye tracking studies examining selective attention biases in social anxiety.

RECENT FINDINGS

Across a number of contexts, social anxiety may be associated with a mix of both vigilant and avoidant patterns of attention with respect to the processing of emotional social stimuli. Socially anxious individuals may additionally avoid maintaining eye contact and may exhibit a generalized vigilance via hyperscanning of their environment. The findings highlight the utility of eye tracking methods for increasing understanding of the gaze-based biases which characterize social anxiety disorder, with promising avenues for future research.

The µ-opioid system promotes visual attention to faces and eyes

Paying attention to others' faces and eyes is a cornerstone of human social behavior. The µ-opioid receptor (MOR) system, central to social reward-processing in rodents and primates, has been proposed to mediate the capacity for affiliative reward in humans. We assessed the role of the human MOR system in visual exploration of faces and eyes of conspecifics. Thirty healthy males received a novel, bidirectional battery of psychopharmacological treatment (an MOR agonist, a non-selective opioid antagonist, or placebo, on three separate days). Eye-movements were recorded while participants viewed facial photographs. We predicted that the MOR system would promote visual exploration of faces, and hypothesized that MOR agonism would increase, whereas antagonism decrease overt attention to the information-rich eye region. The expected linear effect of MOR manipulation on visual attention to the stimuli was observed, such that MOR agonism increased while antagonism decreased visual exploration of faces and overt attention to the eyes. The observed effects suggest that the human MOR system promotes overt visual attention to socially significant cues, in line with theories linking reward value to gaze control and target selection. Enhanced attention to others' faces and eyes represents a putative behavioral mechanism through which the human MOR system promotes social interest.

Attentional mechanisms of social perception are biased in social phobia

Previous studies of social phobia have reported an increased vigilance to social threat cues but also an avoidance of socially relevant stimuli such as eye gaze. The primary aim of this study was to examine attentional mechanisms relevant for perceiving social cues by means of abnormalities in scanning of facial features in patients with social phobia. In two novel experimental paradigms, patients with social phobia and healthy controls matched on age, gender and education were compared regarding their gazing behavior towards facial cues. The first experiment was an emotion classification paradigm which allowed for differentiating reflexive attentional shifts from sustained attention towards diagnostically relevant facial features. In the second experiment, attentional orienting by gaze direction was assessed in a gaze-cueing paradigm in which non-predictive gaze cues shifted attention towards or away from subsequently presented targets. We found that patients as compared to controls reflexively oriented their attention more frequently towards the eyes of emotional faces in the emotion classification paradigm. This initial hypervigilance for the eye region was observed at very early attentional stages when faces were presented for 150ms, and persisted when facial stimuli were shown for 3s. Moreover, a delayed attentional orienting into the direction of eye gaze was observed in individuals with social phobia suggesting a differential time course of eye gaze processing in patients and controls. Our findings suggest that basic mechanisms of early attentional exploration of social cues are biased in social phobia and might contribute to the development and maintenance of the disorder.

The role of emotion knowledge in the links between shyness and children's socio-emotional functioning at preschool

The present study investigated the potential protective role of components of emotion knowledge (i.e., emotion recognition, situation knowledge) in the links between young children's shyness and indices of socio-emotional functioning. Participants were n = 163 children (82 boys and 81 girls) aged 23-77 months (M = 53.29, SD = 14.48), recruited from preschools in Italy. Parents provided ratings of child shyness and teachers rated children's socio-emotional functioning at preschool (i.e., social competence, anxiety-withdrawal, peer rejection). Children were also interviewed to assess their abilities to recognize facial emotional expressions and identify situations that affect emotions. Among the results, shyness was positively related to anxiety-withdrawal and peer rejection. In addition, emotion recognition was found to significantly moderate the links between shyness and preschool socio-emotional functioning, appearing to serve a buffering role. For example, at lower levels of emotion recognition, shyness was positively associated with both anxiety-withdrawal and rejection by peers, but at higher levels of emotion recognition, these associations were attenuated. Results are discussed in terms of the protective role of emotion recognition in promoting shy children's positive socio-emotional functioning within the classroom context.

Impaired face recognition is associated with social inhibition

Face recognition is fundamental to successful social interaction. Individuals with deficits in face recognition are likely to have social functioning impairments that may lead to heightened risk for social anxiety. A critical component of social interaction is how quickly a face is learned during initial exposure to a new individual. Here, we used a novel Repeated Faces task to assess how quickly memory for faces is established. Face recognition was measured over multiple exposures in 52 young adults ranging from low to high in social inhibition, a core dimension of social anxiety. High social inhibition was associated with a smaller slope of change in recognition memory over repeated face exposure, indicating participants with higher social inhibition showed smaller improvements in recognition memory after seeing faces multiple times. We propose that impaired face learning is an important mechanism underlying social inhibition and may contribute to, or maintain, social anxiety.

A new approach to measuring individual differences in sensitivity to facial expressions: influence of temperamental shyness and sociability

To examine individual differences in adults' sensitivity to facial expressions, we used a novel method that has proved revealing in studies of developmental change. Using static faces morphed to show different intensities of facial expressions, we calculated two measures: (1) the threshold to detect that a low intensity facial expression is different from neutral, and (2) accuracy in recognizing the specific facial expression in faces above the detection threshold. We conducted two experiments with young adult females varying in reported temperamental shyness and sociability - the former trait is known to influence the recognition of facial expressions during childhood. In both experiments, the measures had good split half reliability. Because shyness was significantly negatively correlated with sociability, we used partial correlations to examine the relation of each to sensitivity to facial expressions. Sociability was negatively related to threshold to detect fear (Experiment 1) and to misidentify fear as another expression or happy expressions as fear (Experiment 2). Both patterns are consistent with hypervigilance by less sociable individuals. Shyness was positively related to misidentification of fear as another emotion (Experiment 2), a pattern consistent with a history of avoidance. We discuss the advantages and limitations of this new approach for studying individual differences in sensitivity to facial expressions.

How dogs scan familiar and inverted faces: an eye movement study

Faces play an important role in communication and identity recognition in social animals. Domestic dogs often respond to human facial cues, but their face processing is weakly understood. In this study, facial inversion effect (deficits in face processing when the image is turned upside down) and responses to personal familiarity were tested using eye movement tracking. A total of 23 pet dogs and eight kennel dogs were compared to establish the effects of life experiences on their scanning behavior. All dogs preferred conspecific faces and showed great interest in the eye area, suggesting that they perceived images representing faces. Dogs fixated at the upright faces as long as the inverted faces, but the eye area of upright faces gathered longer total duration and greater relative fixation duration than the eye area of inverted stimuli, regardless of the species (dog or human) shown in the image. Personally, familiar faces and eyes attracted more fixations than the strange ones, suggesting that dogs are likely to recognize conspecific and human faces in photographs. The results imply that face scanning in dogs is guided not only by the physical properties of images, but also by semantic factors. In conclusion, in a free-viewing task, dogs seem to target their fixations at naturally salient and familiar items. Facial images were generally more attractive for pet dogs than kennel dogs, but living environment did not affect conspecific preference or inversion and familiarity responses, suggesting that the basic mechanisms of face processing in dogs could be hardwired or might develop under limited exposure.

Shyness in early infancy: approach-avoidance conflicts in temperament and hypersensitivity to eyes during initial gazes to faces

'Infant shyness', in which infants react shyly to adult strangers, presents during the third quarter of the first year. Researchers claim that shy children over the age of three years are experiencing approach-avoidance conflicts. Counter-intuitively, shy children do not avoid the eyes when scanning faces; rather, they spend more time looking at the eye region than non-shy children do. It is currently unknown whether young infants show this conflicted shyness and its corresponding characteristic pattern of face scanning. Here, using infant behavioral questionnaires and an eye-tracking system, we found that highly shy infants had high scores for both approach and fear temperaments (i.e., approach-avoidance conflict) and that they showed longer dwell times in the eye regions than less shy infants during their initial fixations to facial stimuli. This initial hypersensitivity to the eyes was independent of whether the viewed faces were of their mothers or strangers. Moreover, highly shy infants preferred strangers with an averted gaze and face to strangers with a directed gaze and face. This initial scanning of the eye region and the overall preference for averted gaze faces were not explained solely by the infants' age or temperament (i.e., approach or fear). We suggest that infant shyness involves a conflict in temperament between the desire to approach and the fear of strangers, and this conflict is the psychological mechanism underlying infants' characteristic behavior in face scanning.

Childhood maltreatment and response to novel face stimuli presented during functional magnetic resonance imaging in adults

Facial cues contain important information for guiding social interactions, but not all humans are equally expert at face processing. A number of factors, both genetic and environmental, contribute to differences in face-processing ability. For example, both heritable individual differences in temperament and exposure to childhood maltreatment are associated with alterations in face processing ability and social function. Understanding the neural correlates of alterations in face-processing ability can provide insights into how genetic and environmental risk factors impair social functioning. We examined the association between childhood maltreatment and blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal as measured in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a group of young adults with an inhibited temperament. We hypothesized that childhood maltreatment exposure would correlate positively with BOLD signal in regions subserving face processing and novelty detection during viewing of novel compared to familiar faces. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) degree of exposure to childhood maltreatment was positively correlated with BOLD signal in the bilateral fusiform gyri and the left hippocampus. These fMRI findings suggest that young adults with an inhibited temperament and a history of maltreatment may be particularly vulnerable to neural alterations. These differences could be related to a heightened sensitivity to potential threat-for example, from new people-and may contribute to both the altered social functioning and increased incidence of anxiety disorders in these individuals.

The influence of shyness on the scanning of own- and other-race faces in adults

The current study explored the relationship between shyness and face scanning patterns for own- and other-race faces in adults. Participants completed a shyness inventory and a face recognition task in which their eye movements were recorded by a Tobii 1750 eye tracker. We found that: (1) Participants' shyness scores were negatively correlated with the fixation proportion on the eyes, regardless of the race of face they viewed. The shyer the participants were, the less time they spent fixating on the eye region; (2) High shyness participants tended to fixate significantly more than low shyness participants on the regions just below the eyes as if to avoid direct eye contact; (3) When participants were recognizing own-race faces, their shyness scores were positively correlated with the normalized criterion. The shyer they were, the more apt they were to judge the faces as novel, regardless of whether they were target or foil faces. The present results support an avoidance hypothesis of shyness, suggesting that shy individuals tend to avoid directly fixating on others' eyes, regardless of face race.

It’s About Time

Accurate identification of emotional expressions is important to social interaction. We examined the relations among shyness, sociability, and the accuracy of categorization of facial expression of emotions in a sample of 127 undergraduates. Individual differences in sociability, but not shyness, were significantly related to categorization accuracy under conditions of limited presentation time, but not under circumstances of unlimited stimulus presentation time. Adults self-rated as low to moderate in sociability were significantly less accurate in categorizing facial expressions of emotion, albeit only under conditions of rapid stimulus presentation. These results suggest that individual differences in sociability and social exposure may influence the ability to categorize facial expressions of emotions.

Fear and avoidance of eye contact in social anxiety disorder

BACKGROUND

Excessive fear of scrutiny is a defining feature of social anxiety disorder. Eye contact may trigger feelings of being scrutinized, and although eye contact is commonly feared in persons with social anxiety disorder, it has been studied little. The purpose of this study was to characterize fear and avoidance of eye contact in patients with social anxiety disorder and in nonpatient samples.

METHODS

Gaze fears and avoidance, social anxiety, and depression were assessed in 44 patients with generalized social anxiety disorder, 17 matched healthy comparison subjects, and 79 undergraduates. Patients were reassessed after 8 to 12 weeks of treatment with paroxetine. A new self-report instrument, the Gaze Anxiety Rating Scale (GARS), was used to assess fear and avoidance of eye contact, and its psychometric properties were analyzed.

RESULTS

Patients with generalized social anxiety disorder, in comparison with healthy control participants, reported significantly increased levels of fear and avoidance of eye contact, which decreased significantly after 8 to 12 weeks of treatment with paroxetine. Fear and avoidance of eye contact were significantly associated with severity of social anxiety in all 3 samples. The GARS demonstrated excellent internal consistency within each sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Self-reported fear and avoidance of eye contact are associated with social anxiety in both nonpatient and social anxiety disorder samples. Preliminary psychometric analyses suggest that the GARS has utility in the assessment of gaze anxiety.

Virtual social interactions in social anxiety--the impact of sex, gaze, and interpersonal distance

In social interactions, interpersonal distance between interaction partners plays an important role in determining the status of the relationship. Interpersonal distance is an important nonverbal behavior, and is used to regulate personal space in a complex interplay with other nonverbal behaviors such as eye gaze. In social anxiety, studies regarding the impact of interpersonal distance on within-situation avoidance behavior are so far rare. Thus the present study aimed to scrutinize the relationship between gaze direction, sex, interpersonal distance, and social anxiety in social interactions. Social interactions were modeled in a virtual-reality (VR) environment, where 20 low and 19 high socially anxious women were confronted with approaching male and female characters, who stopped in front of the participant, either some distance away or close to them, and displayed either a direct or an averted gaze. Gaze and head movements, as well as heart rate, were measured as indices of avoidance behavior and fear reactions. High socially anxious participants showed a complex pattern of avoidance behavior: when the avatar was standing farther away, high socially anxious women avoided gaze contact with male avatars showing a direct gaze. Furthermore, they showed avoidance behavior (backward head movements) in response to male avatars showing a direct gaze, regardless of the interpersonal distance. Overall, the current study proved that VR social interactions might be a very useful tool for investigating avoidance behavior of socially anxious individuals in highly controlled situations. This might also be the first step in using VR social interactions in clinical protocols for the therapy of social anxiety disorder.