Your face scares me: Effects of Perceptual load and Social Anxiety on processing of threatening and neutral faces

PONE-D-20-37708

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: The authors examine how individuals high in social anxiety, compared to those low in social anxiety, can more readily be distracted by threatening stimuli, especially faces. They also explore the role of perceptual oad. The study was well-designed, well-executed. It was also notable that the authors collected physiological measures as well. Most of the hypotheses were supported, and the authors had reasonable explanations for hypotheses that were not supported (e.g., why threatening faces were not significantly different from threatening objects for those high in SA; why no interaction with stimuli type and emotionality with perceptual load); they also used supplementary physiological measures (e.g., HR) to buttress their accounts. All in all, this one-study manuscript has all the strengths of a one-study manuscript (and all the limitations of a one-study manuscript). The authors also present a comprehensive literature review in the introduction which later allows them to be circumspect and contextualize their findings, describing how their findings dovetail with the rest of the literature.

One limitation that the authors do not address is the decision to focus on the bottom and top quartiles of the SA measures. They report that the average of their sample is a little high, compared to other normative samples. So, why not just a median split to get at the difference between hi and low SA? Or why not keep the SA measure as a continuous variable, and search for interactions? Keeping individual differences measures continuous, instead of splitting them, seems more common in personality and social psychology research. Anyhow, that issue would be good to explain.

Reviewer #2: On the whole I think this is a straightforward and cleanly executed study. The effects in question are to my knowledge novel and demonstrate an intriguing relationship between cognitive load and social anxiety. One interesting consideration that could be a useful way to explore the role of the face itself vs. the low-level distracting information in the face pattern could be consider either negating the contrast of the face or presenting the face image upside-down, both of which are known to reduce the efficiency of face recognition substantially. However, I think the results are presented here with appropriate nuance and the current design supports interesting conclusions that may lead to further work in this area.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No