This dataset seeks to test whether error-related brain activity differs between socially anxious and non-anxious participants within an ecologically valid task context. Towards this end, we will assess error-related brain activity during a real-world golf task.
We hypothesize that individuals with social anxiety will exhibit elevated error-related brain activity when making mistakes in the presence of others, whether on a traditional lab-based computer task or within an ecologically valid sports task.
Participants complete a set of questionnaires assessing social anxiety and sport anxiety followed by a classic flanker task (assessing inhibitory control abilities) along with a golf putting task (allowing for more ecologically valid cognitive control). Each task is completed twice; once while alone (creating a “nonsocial context”) and once while being observed by the experimenter (creating a “social context”). We use 64-channel EEG to assess error detection.
The study room is set up with a camera recording the participant, the putting green, and a stimulus computer located behind the participant during the task. The stimulus computer is synced to the EEG computer located outside the study room and shows a marker every 6 seconds, which is used to sync the clocks between the EEG recording and the video recording. The video recordings are coded in Datavyu to mark time stamps for the onset of a participant making contact with the golf ball, and then whether an error was detected (i.e., whether the ball went in the hole or not).
The error-related negativity (ERN), and event-related potential (ERP) associated with error monitoring are extracted following errors in both tasks, in both conditions (whether alone or under social observation). Additionally, we are performing regression-based analyses in MATLAB to test whether variation in social anxiety more strongly relates to either task in the social condition, and moreover, if there is an interaction between the tasks, such that a stronger relation is observed in the social setting vs non-social setting for one or both tasks.
NCUR Poster Presentation: 4/6/2022
TBD Paper
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This main branch contains completed releases for this project. For all work-in-progress, please switch over to the dev branches.
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| George Buzzell | Principal Investigator |
| Sarah Malykke | Project Lead |
| Olivia Stibolt | PhD Student |
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