Social anxiety is a disorder where people fear social interactions and is associated with physiological changes. Eye tracking studies have shown that people with social anxiety spent more time gazing at emotional faces presented on a computer screen and spent more time gazing at the eye region. There has been limited studies on tracking eye gaze in a real-life setting interacting with another person. We used a wearable eye tracker during a brief one-on-one interview about participants’ challenges faced at work or school. Along with self-report psychological measures about social anxiety and shyness, we also measured participants’ salivary cortisol as a metric for physiological stress. We hypothesized that socially anxious individuals would have higher cortisol levels and spent more time gazing at the face. However, there was no change in cortisol levels before and after the interview. In addition, socially anxious individuals had lower cortisol levels than less anxious people. Furthermore, the time spent fixating on the region of interest (ROI), which was the face, was not correlated with social anxiety, anxiety or shyness. Paradoxically, the more socially anxious participants seem to have had a lower physiological stress response than less socially anxious participants.

Les troubles du spectre de l’autisme (TSA) sont caractérisés par des difficultés persistantes dans les domaines de la communication et des interactions sociales. Les individus atteints de TSA ont notamment des difficultés à décoder les émotions d’autrui et il est souvent suggéré qu’un déficit général du traitement des visages émotionnels est à l’origine de ces difficultés. Cependant, les résultats de la littérature sont incohérents et soulignent l'importance de facteurs méthodologiques qui pourraient influencer la performance des personnes TSA. Deux théories actuelles sont pertinentes au regard de ces difficultés rencontrées dans les interactions sociales : 1) la théorie de la régulation comportementale propose que ces difficultés résultent de dysfonctionnements du traitement des émotions et/ou des mécanismes permettant de répondre de façon appropriée à ces émotions; et 2) la théorie de la motivation sociale propose au contraire que ces mécanismes sont intacts et que les difficultés rencontrées sont le résultat d’un déficit de motivation sociale. Cette thèse avait pour but de départager ces deux théories, tout en contrôlant de nombreux facteurs méthodologiques qui pourraient influencer la performance des personnes TSA. L’expérience 1 visait à étudier l’impact de la direction du regard sur le traitement de la peur et de la colère. L’expérience 2 étudiait les choix d’actions spontanées en présence de visages de peur ou de colère et la catégorisation de ces émotions présentées en vision périphérique. Ces deux études révèlent des résultats similaires chez des adolescents neuro-typiques et TSA. Ces deux groupes sont capables de décoder des expressions de peur et de colère, présentées au centre de l’écran ou en périphérie, ils sont aussi sensibles aux variations d’intensité de ces émotions et aux variations de contexte (ici étudié sous la forme de la direction du regard). D’autre part, les deux groupes répondent de façon similaire à ces émotions, notamment en choisissant des actions qui leur permettent d’éviter des individus menaçants. Pris dans leur ensemble, ces résultats indiquent que les mécanismes impliqués dans le traitement des émotions, l’intégration des facteurs contextuels, et dans l’adaptation de son comportement en réponses à ces signaux sociaux sont intacts chez des adolescents atteints de TSA. Ces résultats sont discutés au regard des théories de la motivation sociale et de la régulation comportementale. / Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental conditions characterised by persistent deficits in social reciprocity. Deficits in emotion perception are common in ASD and suggested to stem from a generalised deficit in the processing of facial affect. The literature however is inconsistent, stressing the importance of methodological factors that might bring individuals with ASD to a disadvantage. Two relevant theoretical frameworks are considered: 1) the behavioural self-regulation account proposes that affective atypicalities stem from deficits in the processing of the emotional signals and/or the regulation of appropriate responses to these signals; and 2) the social motivation account proposes that the mechanisms behind either of these two stages of emotion understanding are intact and that behavioural deficits stem from reduced weighting of social information. This Ph.D. aimed to disentangle between the two theories in the context of social threats by taking into account the necessary methodological factors. Experiment 1 investigated the contextual impact of gaze direction on the categorisation of facial expressions of anger and fear. Experiment 2 investigated both free action choice in response to implicit social threats –facial expressions of anger and fear- and their emotion categorisation accuracy in visual periphery. Across both studies ASD and typically developing (TD) adolescents demonstrated intact processing of both anger and fear in direct view and in visual periphery and were sensitive to the changes in emotional intensity of the stimuli. In Experiment 1, although the control group was overall more accurate than the ASD group in emotion decoding, gaze direction impacted the processing of threat similarly in both groups. Specifically, gaze direction raised the saliency of the threat for the observer and enhanced their sensitivity to the most salient ones. In Experiment 2, both groups demonstrated an overall tendency to avoid emotional agents, which was particularly evident in the case of anger. Taken together, the mechanisms behind the processing of facial social threats appear relatively spared in ASD adolescents and the impact of contextual factors are similar ASD and typical development. Adolescents with ASD are able to use social threats to adapt their behaviour by avoiding the emotional agent, which is not surprising during a developmental period characterised by enhanced reactivity to threat. These findings are discussed in terms of the social motivation and behavioural self-regulation frameworks and future directions are proposed.

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Psychological factors specific to overuse injury pain in physical activity contexts were explored within a social identity theoretical framework. Study 1 involved development of a method for designating overuse injury pain occurrence of hikers (N = 751), along with exploration of relationships between psychological measures, overuse injury pain occurrence, and effort levels. The findings of this cross-sectional, mixed-methods investigation revealed that social identification, social identity content, and mental toughness differentiated hikers who incurred overuse injury pain or selected a higher-effort behaviour from those who did not. From qualitative analysis, several social identity constructs (i.e., group member's presence, in-group status, social creativity, additional social identity content) emerged as contributors to overuse injury occurrence. The focus of Study 2 was a prospective examination of the aforementioned psychological factors in relation to overuse injury severity of hikers (N = 283). Additionally, the Test of Intentions to Reduce Effort (TIRE) was developed to identify individuals with susceptibility to higher overuse injury severity. Results provided evidence of factorial, construct, and predictive validity of TIRE factor scores. TIRE factors and social identity content significantly predicted higher severity of hikers' overuse injury pain. Mental toughness scores moderated the relationship between social identification and overuse injury severity. Study 3 consisted of a qualitative examination of social identity mechanisms of overuse injury pain in a physical activity context, CrossFit®, involving the presence of group leaders, and in which group members view each other. Findings revealed mechanisms pertaining to social identity content, in-group status, and social threats. Overall, the findings support a new means for assessing overuse injury occurrence and susceptibility to higher overuse injury severity, whilst demonstrating the potential applicability of social identity theory to the study of overuse injury. Knowledge gained may ultimately aid development of interventions to reduce overuse injury occurrence and severity of physical activity participants.

L'exclusion sociale est considérée comme l'une des situations les plus douloureuses pour les êtres humains. Les travaux dans ce domaine montrent que même de brefs épisodes d’ostracisme (paradigme du Cyberball) ont des effets importants aux niveaux neurophysiologique, émotionnel et comportemental, l’impact de cet ostracisme au niveau cognitif néanmoins n'a pas reçu beaucoup d'attention. Des résultats récents mettent en évidence une influence négative de l'ostracisme sur les marqueurs électrophysiologiques du contrôle cognitif, il n'y a cependant à ce jour aucune preuve directe d’une réduction de contrôle cognitif sous l’effet d’une exclusion sociale. Dans nos travaux nous avons étudié l'impact de l'ostracisme (Cyberball) sur le contrôle cognitif avec la tâche standard de Simon couplée à des analyses distributionnelles des temps de réaction auprès de populations caractérisées ou non par des expériences chroniques d’ostracisme (i.e., des étudiants ordinaires dans l’Étude 1, des personnes illettrées dans l'Étude 2 et des chômeurs de longue durée dans l'Étude 3). Dans les trois études, de brefs épisodes d'exclusion sociale suffisent à dégrader le niveau de satisfaction exprimé par les participants à l’égard des besoins fondamentaux (appartenance sociale, existence significative, estime de soi, contrôle des événements). Ces effets, cependant, s’avèrent réduits dans les populations chroniquement frappées d'ostracisme, suggérant leur moindre sensibilité à l'exclusion sociale en jeu dans le Cyberball. Plus important encore, cet ostracisme provoque chez les participants non stigmatisés une diminution du contrôle cognitif (Étude 1), mise en évidence dans nos travaux par un effet Simon stable (plutôt que réduit) sur les temps de réaction les plus longs pourtant les plus sensibles à l’expression d’un processus d'inhibition. Cependant, nos résultats ne montrent aucune différence de sensibilité entre les participants chroniquement ostracisés et leurs groupes contrôle (les Études 2 et 3), suggérant une certaine faiblesse du paradigme Cyberball auprès des personnes en situation d'exclusion sociale dans leur vie quotidienne. Nos résultats remettent donc en question la prédominance de ce paradigme pour la compréhension des effets cognitifs de l’exclusion sociale, au moins chez les individus caractérisés par un ostracisme chronique. / Impact on cognitive control, emotions and fundamental needsRésumé : Social exclusion is considered as one of the most painful situations for human beings. Past research showed that even brief episodes of ostracism (the Cyberball paradigm) have strong effects at the neurophysiological, emotional, and behavioral levels, its impact at the cognitive level however did not receive much attention. Recent findings revealed a negative influence of ostracism on electrophysiological markers of cognitive control, yet there is no direct evidence that being socially excluded reduces cognitive control. Here, we investigated the impact of ostracism (using the Cyberball) on cognitive control using a standard Simon task and distributional reaction time analyses with non-chronically-ostracized and chronically-ostracized populations (regular students in Study 1, illiterate people in Study 2, and long-term unemployed people in Study 3). In the three studies, brief episodes of social exclusion had negative effects on participants’ self-reports of fundamental needs' satisfaction (belonging, meaningful existence, self-esteem, and control). These effects, however, were substantially reduced in chronically-ostracized populations, suggesting that ostracism based on the Cyberball is a bit less meaningful for those populations. More importantly, this ostracism caused a transitory reduction in cognitive control in the non-chronically-ostracized participants (Study 1), as indicated by a stable (rather than decreased) Simon effect on longer reaction times where inhibition yet is more likely. However, we found no evidence of a differential sensitivity between the chronically-ostracized participants and their control groups (Study 2 and Study 3), suggesting that the Cyberball paradigm is not powerful enough with people experiencing social exclusion in their ordinary life. Our findings therefore call into question the predominance of the Cyberball paradigm for our understanding of the cognitive effects of ostracism, at least in chronically ostracized-individuals.