Social Anxiety Disorder and Global/Local Performance on a Visuospatial Processing Task

Abstract

Few research studies have examined differences in processing “big-picture,” global stimuli versus detailed, local stimuli in individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Similarly, little is known about the impact of a social stressor on cognitive functioning in SAD. This study explores differences in memory for global and local visuospatial information between participants with SAD (n = 37) and non-anxious control participants (n = 40) using the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test. Half of the participants were exposed to a social stressor (anticipating giving a speech) while they completed the task. Two scoring subscales were used to distinguish between reproduction of global elements and local features on Copy, Immediate Recall, and Delayed Recall trials. Results indicated that participants with SAD who were not exposed to the social stressor performed more poorly at reproducing local elements on the Copy trial, compared to participants in the SAD-stressor present group and both control groups. Additionally, control participants, but not those with SAD, demonstrated improvement in memory for global elements from Immediate to Delayed Recall trials. These results suggest that trait social anxiety impairs consolidation of global visuospatial information over time, and interacts with the presence of a state stressor to affect reproduction of details.