Who gets caught by the emotion? Attentional biases toward emotional facial expressions and their link to social anxiety and autistic traits

The emotional facial expressions of other individuals are a valuable information source in adapting behaviour to situational demands, and have been found to receive prioritized attention. Yet, enhanced attentional biases, such as a bias to social threat in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), or blunted attention to emotional information, as assumed in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), can easily become maladaptive in daily life. In order to investigate individual differences in attentional biases toward different emotional expressions (angry, happy, sad, and fearful versus neutral) and their links to social anxiety and autistic traits, we tested 104 healthy participants with an emotional dot-probe paradigm on a touch screen, and measured clinical trait levels associated with ASD and SAD. While confirming the presence of attentional biases toward all emotional expressions, we did not find robust evidence for systematic links between these biases and either clinical trait dimension. Only an exploratory Bayesian analysis pointed to a less pronounced bias towards happy facial expressions with higher autistic trait levels. Moreover, a closer examination of the attentional bias towards angry facial expressions suggested that alterations in this bias might depend on a complex interplay between both trait dimensions. Novel approaches in the assessment of attentional biases might yield the potential to describe disorder-specific biases in attention to emotions more validly.

Automated summary

This study examined attentional biases towards different emotional expressions and found no consistent links between these biases and social anxiety or autistic traits. Only an exploratory Bayesian analysis suggested a weaker bias towards happy facial expressions in individuals with higher autistic trait levels. Furthermore, the attentional bias towards angry facial expressions appeared to be influenced by an interplay between both trait dimensions. Novel approaches in assessing attentional biases may provide a more valid description of disorder-specific biases in attention to emotions.