No evidence that gaze anxiety predicts gaze avoidance behavior during face-to-face social interaction.

Eye contact is an indispensable social signal, yet for some individuals it is also a source of discomfort they fear and avoid. However, it is still unknown whether gaze anxiety actually produces avoidant gaze behavior in naturalistic, face-to-face interactions. Here, we relied on a novel dual eye-tracking setup that allows us to assess interactive gaze behavior.

Evaluation of an eye tracking setup for studying visual attention in face-to-face conversations.

Many eye tracking studies use facial stimuli presented on a display to investigate attentional processing of social stimuli. To introduce a more realistic approach that allows interaction between two real people, we evaluated a new eye tracking setup in three independent studies in terms of data quality, short-term reliability and feasibility. Study 1 measured the robustness, precision and accuracy for calibration stimuli compared to a classical display-based setup.

Acute Psychosocial Stress Modulates the Detection Sensitivity for Facial Emotions.

Psychosocial stress has been shown to alter social perception and behavior. In the present study, we investigated whether a standardized psychosocial stressor modulates the perceptual sensitivity for positive and negative facial emotions and the tendency to allocate attention to facial expressions. Fifty-four male participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G) or a nonstressful control condition before they performed a facial emotions detection task and a facial dot-probe task to assess attention for positive and negative facial expressions.

The German Version of the Gaze Anxiety Rating Scale (GARS): Reliability and Validity.

Objective: Fear of eye gaze and avoidance of eye contact are core features of social anxiety disorders (SAD). To measure self-reported fear and avoidance of eye gaze, the Gaze Anxiety Rating Scale (GARS) has been developed and validated in recent years in its English version. The main objectives of the present study were to psychometrically evaluate the German translation of the GARS concerning its reliability, factorial structure, and validity.

Autistic traits and empathy in chronic vs. episodic depression.

Objectives: Difficulties in social interaction are characteristic for depressive disorders and one of the cardinal symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). It has been proposed that chronically depressed persons have profoundly impaired empathic abilities in comparison to episodically depressed persons, and that specifically they exhibit a deficit in cognitive empathy, but not in affective empathy, a pattern also reported in ASD. This study aimed to explore autistic traits and empathy deficits in chronic depression, and identify specific differences to episodic depression.