(PS2-29) Objective Interoceptive Measurement Evidence for Exercise and Reduction of Attentional Bias in Social Anxiety

Social anxiety (SA) presents a debilitating concern for 7.4% of folks in the U.S., ranking as the third most prevalent form of psychopathology (Kessler, 2012). Conceptualized as a fear of negative evaluation, SA is often expressed by distressing (e.g., embarrassment) and impairing (e.g., social avoidance) symptoms. Those with heightened SA display hypervigilance and avoidance (i.e., attentional bias) of internal anxiety sensations (e.g., increased heart rate) due to threatening appraisal of said sensations (i.e., the individual is socially evaluated because of these sensations). Recently, exercise has been examined as a possible treatment option for SA (e.g., Goldin et al., 2012). However, much of the SA literature has focused on self-report (e.g., attentional control scale) and behavioral measures (e.g., reaction time) to measure attention, without the use of objective cognitive measures. A novel method of measuring interoception is the heartbeat-evoked potential (HBEP), an EEG component revealing a person’s attention to the heartbeat. Thus, the aim of this study is to determine the differences in interoceptive awareness in those with high social anxiety (HSA) compared to low social anxiety (LSA) and low exercise (LE) compared with regular exercise (RE). It is hypothesized the HSA group and LE group will display larger HBEP amplitudes than the LSA group and RE group, respectively. Additionally, a significant interaction is hypothesized such that participants in both the LSA and RE group will display lower HBEP amplitude compared to LE.

Participants (n=25) completed the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS; Mattick & Clarke, 1998) and a demographics questionnaire to assess social anxiety and exercise habits, respectively. Participants also completed a heartbeat counting task based on work by Shandry et al (1981) and previous research (e.g., Pollatos et al., 2015). This study used an online recruitment system to recruit undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university.

A 2(LSA, HSA) x 2(LE, RE) ANOVA was conducted on HBEP amplitude. Results indicated a significant interaction (F(1, 21)=5.68, p< .05) such that those in the LSA and RE group displayed decreased HBEP, but no differences were noted in the HSA group.

These results indicate exercise influences attentional bias to internal sensations; however, SA may decrease the beneficial effects of exercise on interoception. This provides evidence that other factors may influence attentional control in SA samples (e.g., threat type). Thus, the HBEP may provide a novel measure of attentional bias, useful in assessing biomarkers of social anxiety. Further, evidence that exercise can change attentional bias, even in a healthy sample, may open avenues for innovative anxiety treatments.