Neural responses associated with attentional engagement and disengagement from threat in high socially anxious children: Evidence from temporal-spatial PCA

Background Cognitive models indicated that social anxiety disorder (SAD) would be caused and maintained by a biased attentional processing of threatening information. This study investigates whether socially anxious children may present impaired attentional engagement and disengagement from negative emotional faces, as well as their underlying event-related potential responses. Methods and findings Fifteen children with high levels of social anxiety (HSA; 9 boys; mean age = 9.99y; SD = 1.14) and twenty low socially anxious children (LSA; 16 boys; mean age = 10.47y; SD = 1.17) participated in a spatial cueing task in which they had to detect targets following neutral/disgusted faces in a valid or invalid location. No group effect was reported on reaction times [p>.05]. However, electrophysiological data showed lower P3a amplitude in HSA children compared with the LSA group when processing facial stimuli. They also reported larger N2 amplitudes for valid-disgusted targets and a larger P3a amplitude for the invalid-disgusted ones. Conclusion In terms of electrophysiological data, our results validated, the hypothesis of attentional disengagement difficulties in SAD children. We also confirm the idea that high levels of social anxiety are associated with cognitive control impairments and have a greater impact on the processing efficiency than on the performance effectiveness.

The Development of Explicit and Implicit Game-Based Digital Behavioral Markers for the Assessment of Social Anxiety

Social relationships are essential for humans; neglecting our social needs can reduce wellbeing or even lead to the development of more severe issues such as depression or substance dependency. Although essential, some individuals face major challenges in forming and maintaining social relationships due to the experience of social anxiety. The burden of social anxiety can be reduced through accessible assessment that leads to treatment. However, socially anxious individuals who seek help face many barriers stemming from geography, fear, or disparities in access to systems of care. But recent research suggested digital behavioral markers as a way to deliver cheap and easily accessible digital assessment for social anxiety: As earlier work shows, players with social anxiety show similar behaviors in virtual worlds as in the physical world, including tending to walk farther around other avatars and standing farther away from other avatars. The characteristics of the movement behavior in-game can be harnessed for the development of digital behavioral markers for the assessment of social anxiety. In this paper, we investigate whether implicit as well as explicit digital behavioral markers, proposed by prior work, for social anxiety can be used for predicting the level of social anxiety. We show that both, explicit and implicit digital behavioral markers can be harnessed for the assessment. Our findings provide further insights about how game-based digital behavioral markers can be used for the assessment of social anxiety.

Look at the Audience? A Randomized Controlled Study of Shifting Attention From Self-Focus to Nonsocial vs. Social External Stimuli During Virtual Reality Exposure to Public Speaking in Social Anxiety

Background: Enhanced self-focused attention plays a central role in the maintenance and treatment of Social Anxiety and is targeted in contemporary cognitive behavioral therapy. Actual developments use Virtual Reality (VR) for behavioral training. However, no VR attention training combining exposure to public speaking with shifting attention from self-focus to external focus has been investigated, and no experimental evidence exists on different kinds of external cues as targets of attention. Therefore, we investigated the effects of an attention training during public speaking in VR and examined differential effects of an external focus on nonsocial vs. social stimuli.Methods: In this randomized controlled study, highly socially anxious participants were instructed to focus on either objects or the audience within a virtual speech task. We assessed the pre-post effects on affective reactions, self-perception, and attentional processes during public speaking as well as general Social Anxiety using subjective, physiological, and eye-tracking measures. Repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were calculated to detect changes from pretest to posttest over both groups, and time × group interaction effects.Results: Within the analysis sample (n = 41), anxiety during public speaking and fear of negative evaluation significantly decreased, with no significant differences between groups. No significant time effect, but a significant time × group effect, was found for the looking time proportion on the audience members' heads. Follow-up tests confirmed a significant increase in the social-focus group and a significant decrease in the nonsocial-focus group. For all other variables, except external focus and fear of public speaking, significant improvements were found over both groups. Further significant time x group effects were found for positive affect during public speaking, with a significant increase in the social focus, and no significant change in the nonsocial-focus group.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that attention training to reduce self-focus can be successfully conducted in VR. Both training versions showed positive short-term effects in the highly socially anxious, with particular advantages of an external social focus concerning eye contact to the audience and positive affect. Further research should investigate whether social focus is even more advantageous long term and if reinterpretations of dysfunctional beliefs could be achieved by not avoiding social cues.

Screening Social Anxiety in Adolescents Through the Eyes of Their Carers

Despite the availability of efficacious treatment and screening protocols, social anxiety disorder (SAD) in adolescents is considerably under-detected and undertreated. Our main study objective was to examine a brief, valid, and reliable social anxiety measure already tested to serve as self-report child measure but administered via Internet aimed at listening to the ability of his or her parent to identify social anxiety symptomatology in his or her child. This parent version could be used as a complementary measure to avoid his or her overestimation of children of social anxiety symptomatology using traditional self-reported measures. We examined the psychometric properties of brief and valid social anxiety measure in their parent format and administered via the Internet. The sample included 179 parents/legal guardians of adolescents (67% girls) with a clinical diagnosis of SAD (mean age: 14.27; SD = 1.33). Findings revealed good factor structure, internal consistency, and construct validity. Data support a single, strength-based factor on the SPAIB-P, being structure largely invariant across age and gender. The limited number of adolescents with a performance-only specifier prevented examining the utility of scale to screen for this recently established specifier. It is crucial to evaluate if these results generalize to different cultures and community samples. The findings suggest that the SPAIB-P evidences performance comparable with child-reported measure. Parents can be reliable reports of the social anxiety symptomatology of the adolescent. The SPAIB-P may be useful for identifying clinically disturbed socially anxious adolescents.

Evidence of Delayed, Recursive Benefits of Self-Affirmation on Anxiety in Socially Anxious University Students

Introduction: Persons with social anxiety disorder (SAD) often experience social interactions as threatening and commonly avoid them or perform poorly in them (Asher et al., 2017). Self-affirmation is an intervention shown to help individuals engage effectively in situations they perceive as threatening (Sherman & Hartson, 2011). We hypothesized that self-affirmation would allow socially anxious individuals to participate in more social activities, do so more effectively, and with less stress and anxiety. Methods: Following completion of baseline measures, 75 socially anxious university students were randomly assigned to complete a self-affirming or control writing task. They subsequently completed the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G), and received SAD psychoeducation designed to promote social engagement over the coming month, after which they were reassessed on baseline measures of social anxiety. Results Self-affirmation demonstrated no benefit at the time of engagement in the TSST-G. However, at follow-up, self-affirmed students reported significantly less discomfort, anxiety, and distress related to a variety of social behaviors as well as more engagement in those behaviors, relative to baseline, compared with non-affirmed students. Moreover, significantly more affirmed than non-affirmed participants reported clinically significant reductions in symptoms of SAD at follow-up. Discussion These results help to broaden our conceptualization of self-affirmation and provide support for its potential utility in treatment for those with SAD.

Adolescent Safety Behaviors and Social Anxiety: Links to Psychosocial Impairments and Functioning with Unfamiliar Peer Confederates

Socially anxious adolescents often endure anxiety-provoking situations using safety behaviors: strategies for minimizing in-the-moment distress (e.g., avoiding eye contact, rehearsing statements before entering a conversation). Studies linking safety behaviors to impaired functioning have largely focused on adults. In a sample of one hundred thirty-four 14 to 15 year-old adolescents, we tested whether levels of safety behaviors among socially anxious adolescents relate to multiple domains of impaired functioning. Adolescents, parents, and research personnel completed survey measures of safety behaviors and social anxiety, adolescents and parents reported about adolescents’ evaluative fears and psychosocial impairments, and adolescents participated in a set of tasks designed to simulate social interactions with same-age, unfamiliar peers. Relative to other adolescents in the sample, adolescents high on both safety behaviors and social anxiety displayed greater psychosocial impairments, evaluative fears, and observed social skills deficits within social interactions. These findings have important implications for assessing and treating adolescent social anxiety.

Longitudinal effects of emotion regulation on social anxiety and affect among young adults

Purpose Due to ongoing significant life changes during the transition into higher education, social anxiety can be problematic, especially for college students. It has adverse effects on various aspects of one’s life, including one’s feelings and emotions. The study investigated the interplay between social anxiety and emotions and its impact on affect. The aim of this study is to examine the role of difficulties in emotion regulation in the relationship between social anxiety and change in affect. Design/methodology/approach This is a longitudinal study. Data was collected with self-report instruments at two time points with a gap of four months. Participants were Indian undergraduate students from a technical institute. Findings The result revealed that high social anxiety in tandem with difficulties engaging in goal-directed behavior significantly impacts changes in positive affect. However, this effect was significant only in the presence of depression. Research limitations/implications This study highlights the harmful impact of comorbid issues such as depression in socially anxious individuals. The present study might have implications for educators and clinicians working with college students. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study to test the proposed research model in a sample of Indian college students. The use of a moderated moderation analysis with the three regulation strategies and depression also adds to the uniqueness of this study.