ArticleBehaviour research and therapy2020
Avoidance of social threat: Evidence from eye movements during a public speaking challenge using 360°- video.
Article in Behaviour research and therapy, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- A randomised controlled test in virtual reality of the effects on paranoid thoughts of virtual humans' facial animation and expression.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- Attention guidance augmentation of virtual reality exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder: a pilot randomized controlled trial.Cognitive behaviour therapy · 2022Trial
- Examining speakers' subjective and bio-behavioral responses to audience-induced social-evaluative threat via immersive VR.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Exercise as an adjunct intervention for social anxiety disorder: a mini-review.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Multimodal Assessment of Therapeutic Alliance: A Study Using Wearable Technology.Journal of eye movement research · 2025Article
- Virtual Reality-Based Exposure With 360° Environments for Social Anxiety Disorder: Usability and Feasibility Study.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Attentional heterogeneity in social anxiety disorder: Evidence from Hidden Markov Models.Behaviour research and therapy · 2024Article
- Examination of gaze behaviour in social anxiety disorder using a virtual reality eye-tracking paradigm: protocol for a caseBMJ open · 2023Article
- Multimodal Remote Research on Social Anxiety Using a New Teleconferencing Paradigm.Cognitive therapy and research · 2023Article
- Perspectives on emotional memory images and the persistence of pain.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- No evidence that gaze anxiety predicts gaze avoidance behavior during face-to-face social interaction.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Selective visual attention during public speaking in an immersive context.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2022Article
- Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Treating Social Anxiety: A Scoping Review of Treatment Designs and Adaptation to Stuttering.Frontiers in digital health · 2022Article
- Article
- Look at the Audience? A Randomized Controlled Study of Shifting Attention From Self-Focus to Nonsocial vs. Social External Stimuli During Virtual Reality Exposure to Public Speaking in Social Anxiety.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- Impacts of Cues on Learning and Attention in Immersive 360-Degree Video: An Eye-Tracking Study.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Social anxiety (SA) is thought to be maintained in part by avoidance of social threat, which exacerbates fear of negative evaluation. Yet, relatively little research has been conducted to evaluate the connection between social anxiety and attentional processes in realistic contexts. The current pilot study examined patterns of attention (eye movements) in a commonly feared social context - public speaking. Participants (N = 84) with a range of social anxiety symptoms gave an impromptu five-minute speech in an immersive 360°-video environment, while wearing a virtual reality headset equipped with eye-tracking hardware. We found evidence for the expected interaction between fear of public speaking and social threat (uninterested vs. interested audience members). Consistent with prediction, participants with greater fear of public speaking looked fewer times at uninterested members of the audience (high social threat) compared to interested members of the audience (low social threat) b = 0.418, p = 0.046, 95% CI [0.008, 0.829]. Analyses of attentional indices over the course of the speech revealed that the interaction between fear of public speaking and gaze on audience members was only significant in the first three-minutes. Our results provide support for theoretical models implicating avoidance of social threat as a maintaining factor in social anxiety. Future research is needed to test whether guided attentional training targeting in vivo attentional avoidance may improve clinical outcomes for those presenting with social anxiety.
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