(PS2-9) Attentional Control Deficits in Social Anxiety: A Multimodal Examination of Specificity and Associations with Core Mechanisms

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is defined by excessive fear of negative evaluation in social situations. Such social fears may be influenced, at least in part, by the extent to which individuals are able to flexibly allocate their attention towards adaptive cues in the social environment. Attentional control (AC) is a transdiagnostic mechanism that describes the top-down ability to regulate one’s attention and cognitive resources. In SAD, deficits in AC may contribute to disorder maintenance by impairing attentional disengagement from threats, magnifying focus on and fear of one’s anxiety symptoms, and impeding effective emotion regulation. While impaired AC has been reliably linked to general symptoms of anxiety and depression, the specific relation between AC deficits and social anxiety remains poorly understood. The present study aimed to clarify the role of AC in SAD by examining the unique associations between AC and several facets of social anxiety, above and beyond symptoms of general psychological distress.

Methods: A diverse, high-risk sample of adults endorsing elevated symptoms of SAD (n  = 123) were assessed for attentional control at the self-report level, cognitive control at the behavioral level, social anxiety severity, social anxiety sensitivity, social avoidance/safety behaviors, and generalized anxiety and depression.

Results: Partial correlations revealed that self-reported AC  was negatively associated with all three dimensions of SAD (i.e., social anxiety severity, social anxiety sensitivity, and social avoidance/safety behaviors; rs = -.20 to -.29, ps < .05), after controlling for symptoms of generalized anxiety and depression. Structural equation models (SEM) showed that latent AC negatively predicted latent social anxiety (β = -.44, p < .05), even after controlling for latent psychological distress.

Conclusions: Results converge to suggest that deficits in AC have a unique relation with several mechanisms involved in the maintenance of SAD. These findings support the applicability of Attentional Control Theory to SAD and point to AC as a potential treatment target for social anxiety. Implications of these findings for conceptualizing the role of AC in the onset, maintenance, and treatment of SAD will be discussed.