Brief reportAnticipation of Public Speaking in Virtual Reality Reveals a Relationship Between Trait Social Anxiety and Startle Reactivity
Section snippets
Participants
Forty-five healthy participants (24 women) were recruited through local (college) newspapers, with the following ethnic backgrounds: 64% Caucasian/non-Hispanic, 7% Hispanic, 16% African American, 4% Asian American, and 9% Other/Unknown (age 20–47, mean 28.7). Exclusion criteria included any current psychiatric diagnosis per Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (First et al 1995) and current use of psychoactive medication (per self-report). Informed consent approved by the National Institute
Relationships Among Self-Report Measures and Physiology
Spearman correlations (α = .05) were computed for SSPS, FNE, and STAI-Trait scores and mean startle responses, HR, and SCL during Baseline, Speech, and Count (Table 1). Startle responses were moderately correlated with FNE, SSPS-Negative, and SSPS-Positive during Speech and to some extent during Count and Baseline. The STAI-Trait did not correlate with startle. Startle responses were not correlated with subjective state anxiety in any condition (ps > .20). No correlations were found between FNE
Discussion
We investigated effects of anticipating public speaking on physiologic reactivity across individuals with high and low social anxiety. Two main findings emerged. First, startle reactivity was linearly related to predisposition to experience anxiety in social-evaluative situations, as measured by FNE and SSPS, but was not associated with general trait anxiety. Startle showed robust increases during anticipation of both tasks inside VR, particularly during speech anticipation, relative to
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