Conventional methods for diagnosing Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), such as clinical interviews and self-reported questionnaires, often face accessibility barriers and subjective biases, underscoring the need for objective physiological markers. This study investigates heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) as potential indicators of SAD by analyzing cardiovascular responses to anxiety-inducing speech tasks across four distinct phases: baseline, anticipation, speech activity, and reflection. In a controlled laboratory setting, we analyzed data from 51 participants and found that HRV decreased and HR increased during the anticipation and speech activity phases compared to baseline, while the reflection phase showed a reversal, with HRV increasing and HR decreasing. Participants with SAD exhibited lower HRV, higher HR, and greater self-reported anxiety than non-SAD participants across all phases. These findings enhance our understanding of the physiological signatures of social anxiety and have implications for developing wearable-based monitoring systems for SAD detection and intervention. To support further research, we also release a dataset capturing multi-phase anxiety responses, advancing physiological-based mental health assessment

翻译：社交焦虑障碍（SAD）的传统诊断方法，如临床访谈和自陈式问卷，常面临可及性障碍和主观偏差，凸显了对客观生理标志物的需求。本研究通过分析四个不同阶段（基线期、预期期、言语活动期和反思期）中由焦虑诱发言语任务引发的心血管反应，探讨心率（HR）和心率变异性（HRV）作为SAD潜在指标的可能性。在受控实验室环境中，我们对51名参与者的数据进行分析，发现与基线期相比，预期期和言语活动期的HRV降低、HR升高，而反思期则呈现逆转趋势，HRV升高、HR降低。在所有阶段中，SAD参与者均表现出比非SAD参与者更低的HRV、更高的HR以及更强的自述焦虑。这些发现增进了我们对社交焦虑生理特征的理解，并为开发基于可穿戴设备的SAD监测与干预系统提供了依据。为支持进一步研究，我们同时发布了一个捕获多阶段焦虑反应的数据集，以推动基于生理指标的心理健康评估发展。