The impact of the stimulus features and task instructions on facial processing in social anxiety: An ERP investigation

Social anxiety has been characterized by an attentional bias towards threatening faces. Electrophysiological studies have demonstrated modulations of cognitive processing from 100 ms after stimulus presentation. However, the impact of the stimulus features and task instructions on facial processing remains unclear. Event-related potentials were recorded while high and low socially anxious individuals performed an adapted Stroop paradigm that included a colour-naming task with non-emotional stimuli, an emotion-naming task (the explicit task) and a colour-naming task (the implicit task) on happy, angry and neutral faces. Whereas the impact of task factors was examined by contrasting an explicit and an implicit emotional task, the effects of perceptual changes on facial processing were explored by including upright and inverted faces. The findings showed an enhanced P1 in social anxiety during the three tasks, without a moderating effect of the type of task or stimulus. These results suggest a global modulation of attentional processing in performance situations.

► We use an adapted Stroop paradigm to examine the impact of perceptual and task factors on facial processing in social anxiety. ► We examined P1, N170 and P2 to consider different stages of cognitive processing. ► Social anxiety induced a clear enhancement of P1, without moderator effect of perceptual or task factors. ► N170, P2 and behavioural responses in tasks involving emotional facial expressions were not modulated by social anxiety.