Multisensory processing of emotional cues in individuals with social anxiety: Evidence from event-related potentials.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Previous studies have focused on how individuals with social anxiety process visual information. This study aimed to investigate whether social anxiety affects the processing of facial and vocal expressions when presented separately or together. METHODS: A total of thirty participants with social anxiety disorders (SAD) and thirty-one healthy controls (HC) took part in a forced two-choice emotion identification task. The task involved presenting expressions of anger and happiness through visual, auditory and audiovisual modalities while simultaneously recording the participants' electroencephalography (EEG) data. RESULTS: The results showed that the SAD group had larger P3a amplitudes when recognising anger through auditory and audiovisual stimuli than those HC. However, we found no significant facilitation effect in the audiovisual condition compared to the unimodal conditions for either group. CONCLUSION: Compared with healthy controls, those with social anxiety displayed an interpretation bias towards angry emotions conveyed by auditory and audiovisual modalities at the late processing stage. These findings have significant implications for reducing anxiety levels in individuals with social anxiety through cognitive interventions.