Processing of performance errors and performance feedback in social anxiety disorder

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Jutta Peterburs
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262766138

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by pronounced fear of social and performance situations in which individuals could potentially receive negative feedback. The cognitive, emotional and neural correlates ofperformance-related error and feedback processing in SAD have yet to be systematically investigated, specifically with regard to potential modulation by the social context. The current project is aimed to investigate the processing of internal and external feedback (i.e. self-recognizd errors and positive/negative feedback) depending on the social context in patients with SAD by means of computerized experimental tasks complemented by electrophysiological measures (electroencephalography, EEG) and functional neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI). The following questions will be addressed: 1) To what extentdo SAD patients show altered error-related neural responses? 2) Does the social context influence error processing in SAD patients? 3) Do findings differ with regard to internally and externally recognized errors?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Christian Bellebaum