New study suggests memory games with emotional cues can reduce anxiety-driven focus

New research suggests that a specific type of brain training could help socially anxious individuals break the habit of instantly focusing on threatening social cues. A study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders demonstrates that incorporating emotional images into memory exercises alters how the eyes automatically orient toward angry faces. These findings offer a potential pathway for computer-based therapies to address the automatic cognitive patterns that fuel social anxiety.

Social anxiety is often characterized by a hyper-vigilance to rejection or criticism. This condition manifests physically in how a person observes their environment. Individuals with high levels of social anxiety tend to scan crowds for signs of disapproval.

This phenomenon is known as attentional bias. It acts as a filter that prioritizes threatening information over neutral or positive details. This bias typically happens so quickly that the individual is not consciously aware of it.

Researchers have previously attempted to correct this habit using cognitive training programs. These programs usually involve working memory tasks. Working memory is the brain’s system for temporarily holding and processing information.

Standard training methods typically use neutral shapes or numbers to boost general cognitive control. The theory is that a stronger brain can better regulate fear responses. However, these neutral methods often fail to help people regulate actual emotions.

Huan Zhang and colleagues at Northwest Normal University in China hypothesized that the training needed to be more specific. They proposed that the exercises should include emotional content to be effective. This approach is called emotional working memory training.

The researchers aimed to test whether this emotional integration would produce better results than standard training. They designed a two-part investigation involving university students. Their goal was to first map the eye movements associated with anxiety and then attempt to change them.

In the first experiment, the team sought to confirm exactly how anxiety changes gaze patterns. They recruited 69 undergraduate students for the study. The researchers divided these participants into two groups based on their scores on a standard social anxiety scale.

One group consisted of students with high levels of social anxiety. The other group had low levels of anxiety. The researchers used high-precision eye-tracking technology to monitor where participants looked on a computer screen.

The participants performed a task known as the dot-probe paradigm. The screen flashed two faces simultaneously for a brief moment. One face was neutral, while the other displayed either an angry or a happy expression.

After the images disappeared, a dot appeared in the location of one of the faces. The participants had to press a button to indicate where the dot was. The eye tracker recorded exactly where their eyes moved during the few milliseconds the faces were visible.

The results revealed a clear distinction between the two groups. The students with high social anxiety demonstrated a strong bias toward the angry faces. Their eyes tended to dart toward the threatening image immediately upon its appearance.

This specific metric is called “first fixation orientation.” It measures what the eyes look at first. The high-anxiety group not only looked at the threat first but also spent more time looking at it overall.

In contrast, the low-anxiety group displayed the opposite pattern. They tended to look at the happy faces first. This suggests that non-anxious individuals may have a protective bias toward positive social cues.

The researchers found that the high-anxiety students had difficulty disengaging from the angry faces. Once their attention locked onto a threat, it remained stuck there. This confirmed that early vigilance is a key feature of social anxiety.

With this baseline established, the researchers moved to the second experiment. They invited 58 students with high social anxiety to participate in a training program. These students were randomly assigned to one of two groups.

One group received the experimental emotional working memory training. The other group received a standard, non-emotional version of the training to serve as a control. Both groups attended 20 training sessions over the course of a month.

The training utilized a task called the “dual n-back.” This is a cognitively demanding exercise that requires participants to monitor two streams of information at once. They must remember a sequence of items and identify when a current item matches one from several steps back.

The control group performed this task using shapes and numbers. The emotional training group performed the same mental gymnastics but using emotional faces and words. The difficulty level adjusted automatically based on their performance.

After the month of training was complete, the students returned to the lab. They repeated the eye-tracking test to see if their gaze patterns had changed. The researchers compared these post-training results to their initial scores.

The data showed a specific and distinct improvement in the group that used emotional training. These participants showed a marked reduction in their tendency to look at angry faces first. Their “first fixation orientation” bias toward threat had decreased.

This change suggested that the emotional training successfully recalibrated their automatic attention. By practicing memory tasks with emotional distractors, their brains learned to filter out irrelevant threat cues. The control group did not show this specific improvement.

While the emotional training changed the initial direction of the gaze, it did not change everything. The training did not produce a statistical difference in how long the participants looked at the faces once they were fixated. The duration of their gaze remained similar to pre-training levels.

This indicates that the intervention primarily affected the early, automatic stage of attention. It helped prevent the initial “snap” of attention toward danger. It was less effective at helping them look away once they were already focused.

Both groups showed improvements in general cognitive tasks. They got better at memory and switching between numbers. However, only the emotional training group saw the transfer of these skills to the processing of facial expressions.

The study authors note that the specific content of the training matters. Improving general brain power does not automatically fix emotional biases. The brain appears to need practice dealing with emotional data to improve emotional regulation.

There are limitations to this study that affect how the results should be interpreted. The participants were university students with high anxiety scores, not clinical patients diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. The results might differ in a population with more severe clinical symptoms.

Additionally, the emotional words used in the training were generally negative, such as “grief” or “failure.” They were not specifically related to social rejection. Using words more specific to social fears might produce stronger effects in the future.

The study also only looked at immediate effects after the training month concluded. It is not known how long these benefits last without continued practice. Future research would need to follow participants over a longer period to assess long-term efficacy.

Despite these caveats, the research provides evidence for a mechanism of change. It supports the idea that early attentional processes are malleable. The eye-tracking data offers objective proof that cognitive training can alter rapid physiological reactions.

This approach could eventually serve as a supplement to traditional therapies. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) often involves exposure to feared situations. Reducing the automatic bias to spot threats could make such exposure exercises easier for patients to tolerate.

The study highlights the intricate link between cognitive control and emotional processing. It suggests that by strengthening the brain’s ability to handle emotional information, we can dampen the automatic reflex to find fear in a crowded room.

The study, “Impact of emotional working memory training on threat-related attentional bias in social anxiety: Evidence from eye movement,” was authored by Huan Zhang, Keyin Chen, Pengfei Xu, and Xin Zhao.