Face processing biases in social anxiety: an electrophysiological study.
Studies of information processing biases in social anxiety suggest abnormal processing of negative and positive social stimuli. To further investigate these biases, behavioral performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured, while high- and low-socially anxious individuals performed a modified version of the Erikson flanker task comprised of negative and positive facial expressions. While no group differences emerged on behavioral measures, ERP results revealed the presence of a negative face bias in socially anxious subjects as indexed by the parietally maximal attention- and memory-related P3/late positive potential. Additionally, non-anxious subjects evidenced the presence of a positive face bias as reflected in the centrally maximal early attention- and emotion-modulated P2 and the frontally maximal response monitoring-related correct response negativity. These results demonstrate the sensitivity of different processing stages to different biases in high- versus low-socially anxious individuals that may prove important in advancing models of anxious pathology.
Moser
Jason S
JS
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA. jmoser@udel.edu <jmoser@udel.edu>
Huppert
Jonathan D
JD
Duval
Elizabeth
E
Simons
Robert F
RF
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D015982:Bias; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D012938:Social Perception