“…These contrasting findings might be accounted for by task differences with the filmed speech task used by Cartwright-Hatton et al ( 2005 ) provoking high levels of performance anxiety but not necessarily social anxiety as it was delivered in the presence of a researcher but not peers, did not require interaction and was of relatively short duration (2 min) which may not be long enough for social anxiety processes to influence observable social behaviours, particularly those elicited by social interaction. The conversational/discussion tasks used in the present study and that of Leigh et al ( 2021 ) involved social interaction with peers and were longer, thus potentially allowing social anxiety processes to impact objective social performance. The lack of self-observer discrepancy for those with high social anxiety in the present study also resonates with findings from a systematic review which highlighted that negative self-imagery, associated with SFA, can negatively impact upon both self- and observer- ratings of social performance in neurotypical individuals with social anxiety (Ng et al, 2014 ) Furthermore, the review (Ng et al, 2014 ) found that self-reported negative self-imagery was more related to how one may be perceived from an observer’s perspective, suggesting that fears of negative evaluation by others during this ongoing self-monitoring processing throughout social interactions, and is associated with heightened social anxiety.…”