The Effect of Looming Auditory Biases and Facial Morphing on Threat
Sensitivity in Social Anxiety
by Priyanka Parikh
Faculty Advisor: Michael Telch, Graduate Student Mentor: Adam R Cobb
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is defined as the intense fear of social performance situations. Cognitive models are often used to conceptualize this disorder. The cornerstone of these models delineates SAD to be related to threat appraisal and the magnification of threat. The Looming Vulnerability Model (LVM) follows this approach, but also explicitly defines threat to be dynamic, or approaching/receding. Stemming from the LVM is the Looming Cognitive Style (LCS) (i.e., Individuals with LCS perceive threat to be consistently rising in risk. Anxiety amplifies this perception )and Auditory Looming Bias (i.e., approaching sounds being perceived as closer in distance than its actual location). While research has been done on anxiety and threat perception and anxiety and Auditory Looming Bias, the relationship between all three has not been examined. This study will investigate the relationship between threat sensitivity and auditory looming bias, and threat sensitivity to ambiguous faces in dynamic stimuli. By examining the interaction between both visual and auditory threat sensitivity, insight will be gained on the cognitive processes behind SAD. This, in turn, can benefit future treatment methods for social anxiety disorder.