Thesis Defence: Eyes on Me

Samantha Barg, supervised by Dr. Maya Libben, will defend their thesis titled “Eyes on Me: An Eye-Tracking Investigation of Social Anxiety and Attentional Biases on Zoom” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology.

An abstract for Samantha Barg’s thesis is included below.

Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person defences.

Abstract

Social anxiety is characterized by attentional biases thought to maintain distress during social interactions, yet whether these biases translate to live videoconferencing (VC) environments remains poorly understood. VC platforms are a central medium for social, occupational, and healthcare contexts, and research suggests that unique features, such as constant availability of the self-view icon, may exacerbate social anxiety by prompting self-focused attention, a key mechanism in its maintenance. While attentional biases in social anxiety have been well-documented in face-to-face and pre-recorded contexts, few studies have examined gaze patterns during live, real-time digital interactions.

The present study used dynamic eye-tracking technology to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and visual attention during a live Zoom interaction. Twenty-eight female-identifying students engaged in three social tasks with a female confederate: (1) a Neutral Autobiographical, (2) a Neutral Conversation, and (3) an Evaluative Speech task with gaze recorded across three regions: the self-video icon, the confederate’s icon, and non-social areas. Self-report measures assessed social anxiety, trait and state anxiety, self-esteem, depression, narcissism, and Zoom familiarity.

Contrary to predictions, social anxiety did not predict greater self-viewing tendencies in any task. However, preliminary findings revealed an association between social anxiety and biased attention toward non-social areas of the Zoom screen during the Neutral Autobiographical and Evaluative Speech tasks, consistent with attentional avoidance. Exploratory analyses demonstrated that heightened post-speech anxiety predicted reduced self-viewing, suggesting self-view disengagement may serve as a virtual safety behaviour, and found that depressive symptoms predicted increased confederate viewing during the evaluative condition. Findings suggest that social anxiety-related attentional biases in virtual spaces may be more context-dependent than current cognitive-behavioural models predict, and that VC platforms may accommodate unique attentional strategies with implications for virtually delivered mental health care.