Background and aims: The Neuropsychological performance in patients with anxiety disorders has received much less attention. The present study set out to compare one of the executive performances that means shifting function in two groups of social anxious and normal. Also, The aim of the present study was to investigate performance in this function both of processing efficacy and performance effectiveness.

Methods: In this causal-comparative study, recruited 24 patients with social anxiety disorder and 24 non patients in multi-stage cluster sampling method and were implemented tests of Connor Social Anxiety Scale, Self-reported mental effort scale, and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, The results were analyzed with SPSS software and MANOVA test.

Results: The results showed significant differences between the two groups in both components of performance in the shifting function namely processing efficacy (P<0.001) and performance effectiveness (P<0.001), So that socially anxious group showed poorer performance.

Conclusion: The group of social anxious in compare with normal group showed deficient in the shifting function of working memory. The deficiency observed were related to cognitive models of anxiety disorders specially Attentional Control Theory.