Frontal midline theta tracks negatively biased affective updating in social anxiety from adolescence to young adulthood
Abstract
Negative self-beliefs are a core feature of social anxiety, yet the neurocomputational processes that translate social-evaluative feedback into biased self-beliefs remain poorly understood. Here we examined whether frontal-midline theta (FM-theta) - an EEG signature of performance monitoring – governs how performance-based prediction errors (PEs) are incorporated into updating self-feelings based on performance feedback (i.e., affective updating). A sample of 216 adolescents and young adults (174 female; mean age 18.4 years) participated in a speech performance task during which participants provided a short speech that was evaluated by three judges. After the speech, participants were asked to appraise their own performance on the same evaluative items used by the judges. After their appraisal on each item, participants were provided with the judge’s evaluation and were subsequently asked to indicate how they felt based on the feedback received. We found that participants updated their self-feelings more strongly based on positive than negative feedback, and that this positive affective updating bias weakened with age. As hypothesized, participants with elevated social anxiety displayed more negative affective updating, and social anxiety fully mediated the age-related decline in positive affective updating. Critically, in individuals with elevated social anxiety, the magnitude of negative performance feedback was associated with stronger FM-theta modulated negative affective updating. These findings corroborate previous positive affective updating biases in healthy individuals and furthermore underscore a key role of FM-theta oscillations in feedback-guided affective updating, potentially reinforcing negative self-belief in individuals with elevated social anxiety.
Related
- From Reward to Cue: Developmental Changes in Nucleus Accumbens and Dopamine Signaling from Adolescence to Adulthood
- Dynamic belief representation and updating through learned attractor-like dynamics in the frontal cortex
- Adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence in relation to sleep health in adulthood: An overview of systematic reviews and a global evidence map
- Brief antibiotics exposure during adolescence produces persistent effects on the microbiome and fentanyl-seeking during adulthood in rats.
- Negative memories of dental care during childhood and adolescence are strongly associated with dental anxiety in adulthood
BibTeX
@misc{kortink2026frontal,
title = {{Frontal midline theta tracks negatively biased affective updating in social anxiety from adolescence to young adulthood}},
author = {Elise Kortink and Öykü Gürcan and Selin Topel and Leonie Koban and Melle J.W. van der Molen},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/8gyf2_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8gyf2_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Frontal midline theta tracks negatively biased affective updating in social anxiety from adolescence to young adulthood
AU - Elise Kortink
AU - Öykü Gürcan
AU - Selin Topel
AU - Leonie Koban
AU - Melle J.W. van der Molen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/13
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/8gyf2_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8gyf2_v1/
AB - Negative self-beliefs are a core feature of social anxiety, yet the neurocomputational processes that translate social-evaluative feedback into biased self-beliefs remain poorly understood. Here we examined whether frontal-midline theta (FM-theta) - an EEG signature of performance monitoring – governs how performance-based prediction errors (PEs) are incorporated into updating self-feelings based on performance feedback (i.e., affective updating). A sample of 216 adolescents and young adults (174 female; mean age 18.4 years) participated in a speech performance task during which participants provided a short speech that was evaluated by three judges. After the speech, participants were asked to appraise their own performance on the same evaluative items used by the judges. After their appraisal on each item, participants were provided with the judge’s evaluation and were subsequently asked to indicate how they felt based on the feedback received. We found that participants updated their self-feelings more strongly based on positive than negative feedback, and that this positive affective updating bias weakened with age. As hypothesized, participants with elevated social anxiety displayed more negative affective updating, and social anxiety fully mediated the age-related decline in positive affective updating. Critically, in individuals with elevated social anxiety, the magnitude of negative performance feedback was associated with stronger FM-theta modulated negative affective updating. These findings corroborate previous positive affective updating biases in healthy individuals and furthermore underscore a key role of FM-theta oscillations in feedback-guided affective updating, potentially reinforcing negative self-belief in individuals with elevated social anxiety.
ER -