Enhanced self-focused attention plays an important role in the maintenance and treatment of Social Anxiety. Actual developments use Virtual Reality (VR) for attentional training. However, no VR attentional training combining gaze-based feedback with exposure to social stimuli. Therefore, we investigate which characteristics of gaze-related feedback realized via eye-tracking lead to a positive valence as well as to an increase in focused attention on social stimuli. Additionally, we examine whether the effects differ between low socially anxious (LSA) and highly socially anxious (HSA) individuals.
In this randomized-controlled study participants were instructed to focus on virtual agents until feedback was given. Consequently, the participants’ attentional focus was feedbacked using visual social-internal (smile of the target-agent), auditory non-social external (positive sound) and auditory social-external (verbal, positive statement) feedback, whose latency was also manipulated (after 3, 5 or 7 seconds). Evaluation of the feedback variants and latencies was measured during and after the experiment via ratings of valence and arousal. We further investigated participants’ attentional focus on virtual agents after feedback was received. Results revealed a significant main effect of feedback variant for valence ratings as well as for focused attention. The smile of the target-agent was perceived as more pleasant and elicited more eye-contact than verbal, positive feedback, which was associated with higher valence than positive feedback-sound. Taking into account our exploratory analyses which revealed different effects between LSA and HSA individuals, this pilot study can be used as basis for further research on intervention to change attentional processes in Social Anxiety Disorder.