TY - JOUR T1 - Processing of task-irrelevant natural scenes in social anxiety. AU - Moriya,Jun, AU - Tanno,Yoshihiko, Y1 - 2011/06/21/ PY - 2011/02/15/received PY - 2011/05/25/revised PY - 2011/05/30/accepted PY - 2011/6/24/entrez PY - 2011/6/24/pubmed PY - 2012/1/28/medline SP - 162 EP - 70 JF - Acta psychologica JO - Acta Psychol (Amst) VL - 138 IS - 1 N2 - In this study, by manipulating perceptual load, we investigated whether socially anxious people process task-irrelevant, non-emotional, natural scenes. When attention was directed to letters and perceptual load was low, task-irrelevant natural scenes were processed, as evidenced by repetition priming effects, in both high and low socially anxious people. In the high perceptual load condition, repetition-priming effects decreased in participants with low social anxiety, but not in those with high social anxiety. The results were the same when attention was directed to pictures of animals: even in the high perceptual load condition, high socially anxious participants processed task-irrelevant natural scenes, as evidenced by flanker effects. However, when attention was directed to pictures of people, task-irrelevant natural scenes were not processed by participants in either anxiety group, regardless of perceptual load. These results suggest that high socially anxious individuals could not inhibit task-irrelevant natural scenes under conditions of high perceptual load, except when attention was focused on people. SN - 1873-6297 UR - https://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/citation/21696695/Processing_of_task_irrelevant_natural_scenes_in_social_anxiety_ L2 - https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0001-6918(11)00123-5 DB - PRIME DP - Unbound Medicine ER -