Individual differences in perceptual sensitivity and response bias in anxiety: Evidence from emotional faces

Abstract

We investigated the perception of emotional stimuli in anxious individuals and non-anxious cohorts. Signal detection theory analysis was applied to the discrimination of emotionally charged faces at several points along a continuum of emotional intensity. This design permitted the derivation of multiple measures of sensitivity and response bias for fearful and for happy faces. Anxious individuals lacked a conservative bias in judging fearful stimuli and a liberal bias in judging positive stimuli compared with non-anxious individuals. In addition, anxious participants had lower perceptual sensitivity (d′) than non-anxious participants for mildly threatening stimuli, as well as a trend towards lower perceptual sensitivity for moderately positive stimuli. These results suggest that the processing of threat information in anxiety is affected by sensitivity and bias differently at different levels of affective intensity.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Helene and Woolf Marmot Research Fund for Neurophysiology and by grants from the Israeli Science Foundation (989/03) and the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel to Yair Bar-Haim.