Candidate: Scott Walter Maieritsch

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Psychology

Title: Social Anxiety: Attentional Bias in Reaction to Emotional Faces Before and After Participation in a College Level Public Speaking Course

Date: Tuesday, July 9, 2002, 9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
3715 Wood Hall 

Committee:
Dr. Lester Wright, Jr., Chair
Dr. C. Richard Spates
Dr. Amy Naugle
Dr. Helle Augustesen

 Abstract:
This study was designed to examine the effectiveness of a semester-long public speaking course in reducing the self-reported levels of communication anxiety and social anxiety among college students enrolled in such a course. The current study also sought to replicate and extend a recent line of research that has demonstrated that highly socially anxious individuals show an attentional bias away from emotional faces under conditions of social-evaluative threat. The current study extended this line of research by conducting the same reaction time procedure with participants in a pretest/post-test design.

The project was designed to determine if groups (rating high vs. low on a self-report measure of social anxiety at the beginning of the semester) significantly differ from one another with respect to a reaction time/modified dot probe task. Participants were asked to complete the pencil and paper measures of anxiety and the modified dot probe task at the beginning of the semester and again at the end of the semester. Pretest and posttest scores on the self-report measures and the reaction time task were analyzed to determine if any significant change occurred for either of high anxiety or low anxiety participants. Finally, differences between groups from pretest to posttest on these measures were examined.

One-way repeated measures ANOVAs examining the pretest and posttest scores on the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) indicated that the high anxiety group showed a statistically significant reduction in self-reported anxiety. Additionally, a significant positive correlation was identified for all participants at pretest between scores on the FNE and reaction time bias scores on the modified dot probe task for faces expressing negative emotions. Finally, a series of Mann-Whitney U and repeated measures t-tests were conducted to identify any significant changes within groups and between groups from pretest to posttest on the FNE and the reaction time-modified dot probe task. The results and the directions for future research are discussed.

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