Research on the Association Between Emotional Perception Bias and Deteriorated Visuospatial Attention Allocation Ability in Increasing the Level of Social Phobia
본 연구의 목적은 사회공포증 수준에 따른 정서지각 편향성의 변화와 이 변화에 기여하는 시공간 주의배분능력에 대해 탐구하는 것이다. 이를 위해, 본 연구에서는 사회공포증 수준을 측정하기 위해 한국형 자기보고식 설문 검사인 사회공포증 검사(Korean version of social avoidance and distress, K-SAD)를 사용하였으며, 정서지각 편향성과 시공간 주의배분능력을 측정하기 위해 정서지각 과제(emotional perception task)와 UFOV 과제(useful field of view task)를 사용하였다. 본 연구에는 118명의 연구참가자가 참여하였고 응답을 성실하게 하지 않은 연구참가자들을 제외하여 107명(남: 94명, 여: 13명)의 자료가 분석되었다. 연구참가자들은 K-SAD 점수에 따라 세 집단으로 나뉘어졌다. 연구 결과, 정서지각과제에서 긍정적 정서지각 편향성은 사회공포증 수준이 높을수록 더 크게 나타났으며 UFOV 과제에서는 사회 공포증 수준이 높을수록 저하된 시공간 주의배분능력이 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 사회공포증 수준의 증가에 따라 나타나는 저하된 시공간 주의배분능력이 긍정적 정서지각 편향성에 부분적으로 기여할 가능성이 있다는 것을 시사한다.
This study aimed to investigate the changes of emotional perception biases according to the level of social phobia and the relationship with visuospatial attention allocation ability. This study used the Korean self-report assessment test (Korean version of social avoidance and distress, K-SAD) to measure the level of social phobia. Moreover, the emotional perception and useful field of view (UFOV) tasks were employed for measuring emotional perception biases and visuospatial attention allocation ability, respectively. A total of 118 participants participated in this experiment, and only 107 (males: 94, females: 13) data were analyzed due to the exclusion of response errors and other statistical problems. The average age of the participants used in the analysis was 21 years (SD: 3.64), and those participants were divided into three groups according to the K-SAD scores. Consequently, all experimental groups showed negative emotional perception biases in the emotional perception task, but the magnitudes of the biases of each group were not significantly different. Furthermore, the positive emotional perception biases were higher at higher levels of social phobia, which could be related to the tendency of interpreting positive stimuli negatively. In the UFOV task, the higher the level of social phobia, the lower the visuospatial attention allocation ability. These results suggest that the deterioration of visuospatial attention allocation ability potentially contributes to the increase of positive emotional perception biases by being difficult to perceive external stimuli. Thus, this paper discusses the potential contribution of visuospatial attention allocation ability to the increased perceptual biases of positive emotions as the level of social phobia increases.