Background and objectives

Misperception of other people's intention and emotions could cause and worsen interpersonal problems, thereby increasing the likelihood of developing depression and anxiety disorders among individuals who are already at risk for those conditions. Although multisensory emotional information is ubiquitous in the real world, most previous research focused exclusively on processing facial expressions. Addressing this gap, the current study examined the association between behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity and audio-visual emotional information processing. Sensitive BIS suggests heightened sensitivity to anxiety provoking stimuli and is a known risk factor for developing emotional disorders. We hypothesized that higher BIS levels would be associated with inefficient multisensory emotional processing, which might be pronounced for neutral stimuli.

Methods

Seventy-six undergraduates (40 women) completed a task while target faces (disgusted, happy, and neutral) were rendered invisible, and a voice (disgusted, happy, and neutral) or no voice was presented simultaneously. Participants' reaction times to indicate the location of the interocularly suppressed faces were measured.

Results

Individuals with lower BIS levels detected neutral faces faster when accompanied by neutral voices than by no voice; individuals with higher BIS levels, however, did not benefit from congruent auditory information when processing neutral faces.

Limitations

The current study cannot address whether the finding is due to attentional biases, interpretation biases, or both in individuals who are prone to become anxious.

Conclusion

Multisensory processing of neutral information is modulated by individuals' propensity to become anxious.

中文翻译：

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行为抑制系统敏感性调节视听中性信息处理。

背景和目标

对其他人意图和情绪的误解可能会导致并恶化人际关系问题，从而增加已经处于这些状况风险中的个体患抑郁症和焦虑症的可能性。尽管多感官情感信息在现实世界中无处不在，但之前的大多数研究都专注于处理面部表情。针对这一差距，目前的研究检查了行为抑制系统 (BIS) 敏感性与视听情绪信息处理之间的关联。敏感的 BIS 表明对引起焦虑的刺激高度敏感，并且是发展情绪障碍的已知风险因素。我们假设较高的 BIS 水平与低效的多感官情绪处理有关，

方法

76 名本科生（40 名女性）完成了一项任务，同时使目标面部（厌恶、高兴和中立）不可见，同时出现声音（厌恶、高兴和中立）或没有声音。测量了参与者指示眼间抑制面部位置的反应时间。

结果

BIS 水平较低的个体在有中性声音的情况下比没有声音时更快地检测到中性面孔；然而，BIS 水平较高的个体在处理中性面孔时并没有从一致的听觉信息中受益。

限制

目前的研究无法说明这一发现是由于容易变得焦虑的个体的注意力偏差、解释偏差还是两者兼而有之。

结论

中性信息的多感官处理受个体焦虑倾向的调节。