The impact of high trait social anxiety on neural processing of facial emotion expressions in females

• An early hypervigilance was found to emotional expressions in high social anxiety.
• Later processing was increased (increased P3 amplitude) in high social anxiety.
• This finding supports predictions of the cognitive model of social anxiety.
• Predictions of the vigilance-avoidance model were not confirmed.
• Increased early and late attention was found to all emotional expressions.

A cognitive model of social anxiety predicts that an early attentional bias leads to greater cognitive processing of social threat signals, whereas the vigilance-avoidance model predicts there will be subsequent reduction in cognitive processing. This study tests these models by examining neural responses to social threat stimuli using Event-related potentials (ERP). 19 women with high trait social anxiety and 19 women with low trait social anxiety viewed emotional expressions (angry, disgusted, happy and neutral) in a passive viewing task whilst ERP responses were recorded. The HSA group revealed greater automatic attention, or hypervigilance, to all facial expressions, as indexed by greater N1 amplitude compared to the LSA group. They also showed greater sustained attention and elaborative processing of all facial expressions, indexed by significantly increased P2 and P3 amplitudes compared to the LSA group. These results support cognitive models of social anxiety, but are not consistent with predictions of the vigilance-avoidance model.