Schedule of Events | Symposia

Perceptual Load Effects in Rejection Sensitivity Across Facial and Non-Facial Stimuli

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Bradley E. Buchanan¹ (buchanan12@usf.edu), Rachel Gaynor¹, Harold A. Rocha¹, Ashlee Ross¹, Sofia Laporte¹, Emma Sonenblum¹, Emily A. Rancorn¹, Geoffrey F. Potts¹; ¹University of South Florida

Attention and visual selection are integral aspects in the rapid processing of social cues when informing our behaviors. Understanding how deficits in attention across psychological disorders impact this rapid processing can lead to more sound theoretical frameworks for treatments. Rejection Sensitivity (RS) is a personality trait characterized by maladaptive responses to rejection. RS has been shown to be a direct and indirect predictor of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Both RS and SAD have been shown to display similar attentional biases (hypervigilance) toward social feedback cues (such as faces). However perceptual load, or the complexity of features within a given perceptual field, has been shown to absorb the attentional resources needed for this attentional bias. While this has held true for SAD, some associated traits of SAD, such as trait anxiety, show a resilience toward these load effects. A sample of 66 undergraduate students were examined utilizing a visual search task to explore behavioral and neural correlates of perceptual load effects in the attentional biases toward facial distractors within those who self-reported highly RS traits. Overall, findings suggest that attentional differences were found between low and high RS groups. With the addition of RS and distractor interactions in behavioral data it is possible this difference could be considered evidence of hypervigilance. Additionally, perceptual load appeared to modulate performance and later attentional resource allocation, as indexed by P3 amplitudes, in both RS groups regardless of distractor. Limitations and implications of these findings are discussed for future works.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Nonspatial