The correlation between social anxiety severity and visuospatial memory precision

Abstract

The present study experimentally investigated the relationship between social anxiety severity and visuospatial working memory (VSWM) and whether there is a three-way interaction of emotion, target position, and social anxiety level on VSWM performance. Participants were asked to complete the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ) and Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) questionnaires before being assigned to a memory-guided saccade task in the form of fixed-viewing paradigm (n=44) or a free-viewing paradigm (n=59). Both paradigms include four quadrants, each consisting of one emotional distractor or mask. The emotional distractor (fearful versus neutral) or mask is in the corner of the quadrant. In the fixed-viewing paradigm, participants were asked to remain fixated at the center of the screen while the target that needed to be memorized was presented randomly on one of the quadrants (located within the same versus different quadrant with the distractor). We observed that VSWM precision could be influenced by the emotional distractor itself and the interaction between emotion and location in the fixed-viewing paradigm, while the interaction was not affected by social anxiety severity. No correlation between social anxiety severity and VSWM was found for the free-viewing paradigm. Also, no interaction effect was found for emotion and target dot position, and thus, social anxiety level did not show covariate roles in the effect of emotions and positions on VSWM precision. Future research should further examine whether automatic attraction could also be applied to the peripheral vision of socially anxious individuals.