The effects of social anxiety on recognition memory for social threat words: An ERP study

In this study, the effect of social anxiety on item recognition memory was examined by adopting a study-test paradigm. Participants with high and low social anxiety (31 HSA vs. 30 LSA) memorized neutral target and threat target (NT vs. TT) words while threat distracters were simultaneously presented. The behavioral results did not exhibit group differences in recognition performance. The event-related potentials (ERP) results showed that the HSA and LSA participants all did not exhibit significant old/new effects for neutral targets, while only the LSA participants exhibited significant old/new effects for threat targets. For the distracters, the HSA participants did not exhibit evident old/new effects under the NT and TT conditions; while LSA participants showed a reversed LPC old/new effect for the threat distracters under the NT condition. The old/new effects for threat targets were impaired in HSA participants but presented in LSA participants. These findings suggest that social anxiety modulates the effect of recognition memory for social threat words. •For neutral target words, the HSA and LSA participants all did not exhibit significant old/new effects when distracters were threat words.•For threat target words, only LSA participants showed significant old/new effects when distracters were also threat words.•Under the neutral target (NT) condition, the LSA participants exhibited a reversed LPC old/new effect for threat distracter words.•Social anxiety modulates the effect of recognition memory for social threat words.