Performance anxiety is associated with uncertainty-dependent reward and punishment learning biases in skilled performers

Performance anxiety (PA) is common in high-stakes settings, from public speaking to the performing arts, yet its mechanisms remain poorly understood. Using behavioural analysis, computational modelling, and electroencephalography, we examine whether PA is associated with differences in learning from reward and punishment under varying task uncertainty. Across three experiments with 95 pianists, participants adjusted melody dynamics to match an unknown dynamics target using graded reward or punishment feedback.

Bayesian hierarchical regression shows that increasing PA levels are associated with faster reward learning under high uncertainty (large action space) but faster punishment learning under low uncertainty (reduced action space). These learning biases—reflecting the interaction between PA and reinforcement type—are associated with reinforcement-driven modulation of motor variability and frontal theta (4–7 Hz) activity encoding feedback changes and signalling motor adjustments. The findings associate predisposition to PA with differences in reward- and punishment-based learning that depend on task uncertainty.

The authors thank Jenny Halseid for support in part of the data collection (Experiment 1, Goldsmiths University of London). The research was partially funded by the Strategic Research Fund of Goldsmiths University of London (MHR), by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the South East Network for Social Sciences (SENSS) through grant ESRC grant number ES/Y001834/1 (AEH, MHR), and by JST CREST (JPMJCR20D4) and JST Moonshot R&D (JPMJMS2012) (SF, TO, YK). These authors contributed equally: Andrea Erazo Hidalgo, Maria Herrojo Ruiz.

School of Mind, Body and Society, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK Andrea Erazo Hidalgo, Lisa Pearson & Maria Herrojo Ruiz College of Design Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan NeuroPiano Institute, Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc., Tokyo, Japan Takanori Oku, Yudai Kimoto & Shinichi Furuya The authors declare no competing interests. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

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Erazo Hidalgo, A., Pearson, L., Oku, T. et al. Performance anxiety is associated with uncertainty-dependent reward and punishment learning biases in skilled performers. Commun Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-10904-7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-10904-7