Abstract
The present study aimed to examine effects of social anxiety on the focus of attention and the instability of attention during an anticipatory situation and a social-evaluative situation. After screening by the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) , the participants, 24 undergraduate students, were divided into a high social anxiety group (n=13) and a low social anxiety group (n= 11). In a speech session, the participants pushed a button when they detected any behavior exhibited by 2 raters. Following that session, the participants rated the focus of attention, instability of attention, and their impressions of the raters' behavior. Internal information processing was facilitated more in the high social anxiety group than in the low social anxiety group during both anticipatory and social-evaluative situations. Moreover, both groups detected negative behavior more than neutral or positive behavior, and showed instability of attention during the social-evaluative situation. These results suggest that the focus of their attention was shifted to external or internal information within attentional resources.
