The modulatory effect of evaluative valence on fear generalization in social anxiety: an SSVEP study

This study reveals that social anxiety is characterized by a sustained state of early visual hypervigilance. Critically, we provide neurophysiological evidence that a core deficit underlying this condition is an impaired ability to utilize positive evaluation to down-regulate this hypervigilance. These results redefine our understanding of the cognitive-neural mechanisms of social anxiety, shifting the focus toward deficits in the neural processing of positive social information, and suggest that interventions should aim to restore the adaptive processing of positive social feedback.