Role of social competence in emotion processing among emerging adults with anxiety

Individuals with anxiety disorders tend to gravitate their attention to faces showing anger, which may reinforce fears associated with social situations and impact their social competence. Yet it is unclear whether social competence may explain differences in attention allocation to emotional faces in anxiety disorders. This study used eye-tracking to assess gaze patterns in 57 females aged 15 to 24 who viewed emotional faces (angry and neutral) on a screen. It explored whether latency to first fixation and dwell time on emotional faces (female and male) are dependent on anxiety symptoms and social competence, and if social competence accounts for the association of anxiety with attention allocation. With increasing anxiety symptoms, participants' dwell time on neutral compared to angry female faces increased, yet no effects were observed for male faces. Similarly, with decreasing social competence, participants' dwell time on neutral compared to angry female faces increased, yet no differences were observed for male faces. Contrary to the hypothesis, social competence did not account for the effects of anxiety on attention allocation. No effects were observed for latency to first fixation. Anxiety and social competence are both independently associated with attentional biases toward facial expressions in female participants. Yet, these associations seemed to depend on the gender of the face seen.