Everyday there are new studies that help shape up the world for the future and gives the people something to build off of. More specifically, the change in human factors studies may be the key to finding specific ways to help the world function in a more efficient manner. A study that has been practice within the human factors field is called psychophysics. This study involves quantitative relations between physical and psychological events which also includes sensations and the stimuli that may produce them. This study was created by a German philosopher and scientist Gustav Fechnar it begun its journey within experimental psychology discovering that the amount of change in magnitude of a given stimulus necessary to produce a just-noticeable change in sensation always bore an approximately constant ratio to the total stimulus magnitude (Britannica,2017).
More recently this study is used today in more practical areas such as evaluations and product comparisons(liquor, perfume, tobacco) also a look into their personnel and psychological testing. Moreover, in this paper I will be reviewing a human factors study called the “Perceptual sensitivity and response bias in social anxiety: An application of signal detection theory”. This study is using a form of psychophysics called signal detection theory which demonstrates the stimulus dependence on the intensity and physical/psychological state of the individuals. Furthermore, I will be describing the study in its entirety, displaying the methods and findings of the study, and lastly discussing future work that could be done.
The study is called “Perceptual sensitivity and response bias in social anxiety: An application of signal detection theory” and the aim of this study shifted to social anxiety being associated with the tendencies to perceive other people’s facial expressions in a negative fashion. Interpreting and identifying facial expressions are essential to understanding the thoughts, intent, and emotions when there is interaction between individuals. Facial expressions are known to help identify social anxiety, which coincides with the fear of being evaluated negatively by others.
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According to Clark & Wells, socially anxious individuals show negatives biases in social information processing. This suggest that most individuals intercept facial expressions that are neutral and ambiguous as negative or threatening fashion. This study took previous studies underlying biases that remained unknown towards redesigning its own conclusion. They concluded that the biases may root from two independent sources which are individuals’ difference in the response of criterion and individual differences in sensitivity. This study dived more into the two factors of social anxiety by applying signal detection theory. SDT allows researcher to differentiate between the individual’s ability to identify a given affective expression like anger. Furthermore, analyzing their tendency to label a face of the given expression as a particular expression as angry or happy.
With SDT you can also examine the how well individuals are better at detecting a threat or going to detect all facial expressions as a threat. Although SDT is beneficial to this study but hasn’t been to others due to the two factors they did not consider. More importantly, they did not clarify the roles of response and sensitivity in socially anxious individuals processing of facial expressions. In this study, it was presented a facial expression of created blending neutral faces and full-blown expressions of anger or happiness. Using a morphed setting by establishing thresholds for detecting a particular emotion along each expression depending on ranging from neutral to full-blown. The hypothesis was based on the social anxiety that can link with greater sensitivity to anger and more liberal response criteria. The method that was used included eighty-nine psychology undergraduate students that gets credited a course credit for participation.
The average age was 22.37 and included 57 women and 31 men, this shows it totaled 88 because one person got excused because they were unable understand the study procedure. Before the procedure participants should provided a written informed consent after their SIAS survey. Moreover, they are later introduced to the task which requires participants to be seated in front of a 17” CRT computer, by the end of participants will have completed a total of 200 trials followed by a debrief. Also, each participant is to complete Social Interaction Anxiety Scale where it shows each participant level of social anxiety ranging on a 5 point scale, similar to a Likert scale. The stimuli were based on four picture models with a variety of two men and two women.
Furthermore, using a Yang and Oh to enter the Korean database to help morph a neutral and emotional face. 80 pictures were used for the main trials, only 20 pictures with half of those pictures being happy or angry. The task participants were to identify whether a specific emotion was present or absent in each image. All pictures within a block of seeing them were the same type, at the beginning of each block they were to inform the type of emotion and determining if its absent or present in each picture. Each trial starts the participant with a fixation point of 500ms with a 12.08 x 16.06 image, at each fixation point the participants were asked to indicate the specific emotion by pressing the proper response key.
Lastly, the results from this study we used a two-emotion Social Anxiety General Linear Models, which helps the continuation of the nature of social anxiety to be preserved. It was concluded sensitivity there was a less significant level of anxious of individuals. Moreover, lower levels with social anxiety were linked with the tendency of an angry expression. With the finding suggest that the target for potential intervention for socially anxious individuals that see facial expressions in a negative manner. The intervention could be a way to adopt a training program to reshape their way of interpreting facial expressions with facial cues. Furthermore, with everything that was done it has no limitations and it has helped find a link between social anxiety disorder. Future studies could be directed to a attentional bias which is considered a third variable that promotes the investigating on sensitivity towards the response of an expression. It is also a threat cue which draws attention to investigating sensitivity that can effect stress and help access a better understanding on social anxiety.
