Patterns of Metaperception in Adolescents with Social Anxiety: Mind Reading in the Classroom

Socially anxious adults display an interpretation bias toward anticipating threat such as a high probability of audience criticism even in nonthreatening social situations. They may also expect more negative audience reactions to self than to others acknowledging anxiety. Few studies have examined such biases in adolescents. We examined negative and positive metaperceptions (i.e., others’ perceived responses) in 13–16-year-old adolescents (n?=?655) with high vs. normal social anxiety in a hypothetical classroom scenario, in which the participants predicted the frequency of negative and positive classmate responses when imagining either themselves (self-referent metaperceptions) or a classmate (other-referent metaperceptions) with visible symptoms of social anxiety as the target persons giving a speech. We assessed social anxiety with the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents and metaperception using the Classroom Questionnaire of Social Anxiety and Interpersonal Cognition. Social anxiety was associated with negative self-referent metaperceptions to a greater degree than with negative other-referent metaperceptions. Compared with adolescents with normal social anxiety, those with high social anxiety (both boys and girls) predicted a broader range of negative classmate responses toward self, as compared with their predictions of negative responses toward a classmate. These group differences were observed specifically with regard to audience’s predicted covert negative responses (i.e., negative thoughts and feelings) toward self, indicating that socially anxious adolescents tend to mind-read. Minimal group differences in positive metaperceptions were observed. The results reveal target and content specificity in socially anxious adolescents’ negative metaperceptions.     

Images of the self and self-esteem: do positive self-images improve self-esteem in social anxiety?

Negative self-images play an important role in maintaining social anxiety disorder. We propose that these images represent the working self in a Self-Memory System that regulates retrieval of self-relevant information in particular situations. Self-esteem, one aspect of the working self, comprises explicit (conscious) and implicit (automatic) components. Implicit self-esteem reflects an automatic evaluative bias towards the self that is normally positive, but is reduced in socially anxious individuals. Forty-four high and 44 low socially anxious participants generated either a positive or a negative self-image and then completed measures of implicit and explicit self-esteem. Participants who held a negative self-image in mind reported lower implicit and explicit positive self-esteem, and higher explicit negative self-esteem than participants holding a positive image in mind, irrespective of social anxiety group. We then tested whether positive self-images protected high and low socially anxious individuals equally well against the threat to explicit self-esteem posed by social exclusion in a virtual ball toss game (Cyberball). We failed to find a predicted interaction between social anxiety and image condition. Instead, all participants holding positive self-images reported higher levels of explicit self-esteem after Cyberball than those holding negative self-images. Deliberate retrieval of positive self-images appears to facilitate access to a healthy positive implicit bias, as well as improving explicit self-esteem, whereas deliberate retrieval of negative self-images does the opposite. This is consistent with the idea that negative self-images may have a causal, as well as a maintaining, role in social anxiety disorder.     

Cognitive specificity and affective confounding in social anxiety and dysphoria in children

Cognitive features of social anxiety and dysphoria were examined with a design that allowed for evaluation of each state alone and in combination. From a community sample of 211 8 to 12 year olds, four groups of children were defined based on previous researcher's criteria: mixed (high socially anxious-dysphoric;n= 14), socially anxious (high socially anxiousnondysphoric;n= 14), dysphoric (non-socially anxious-dysphoric;n= 13), and control (non-socially anxious-nondysphoric;n= 14). The negative cognitive triad and negative cognitions pertaining to the self were associated with both dysphoria and social anxiety. Both dysphoric and socially anxious groups reported significantly more cognitive distortions than the control group, yet cognitive distortions of overgeneralizing and personalizing were specific to social anxiety and not dysphoria. Both dysphoric and socially anxious groups reported significantly more depressive cognitions than the control group, and evidence of cognitive content-specificity emerged only for anxiety, although there was some evidence for depressive content-specificity in the mother's ratings. The mixed group was the most dysfunctional on all of the cognitive measures. This study provided some evidence of cognitive-specificity as well as the confounding between the affective states of dysphoria and social anxiety. Methodological, theoretical, and treatment implications are highlighted.     

The effects of self-focus on attentional biases in social anxiety:An ERP study

Cognitive theories of social anxiety disorder suggest that biased attention plays a key role in maintaining symptoms. These biases include self-focus and attention to socially threatening stimuli in the environment. The goal of this study was to utilize ERPs that are elicited by a change detection task to examine biases in selective attention (i.e., N2pc) and working memory maintenance (i.e., contralateral delay activity; CDA). Additionally, the effect of self-focus was examined using false heart rate feedback. In support of the manipulation, self-focus cues resulted in greater self-reported self-consciousness and task interference, enhanced anterior P2 amplitude and reduced SPN amplitude. Moreover, P2 amplitude for self-focus cues was correlated with reduced task performance for socially anxious subjects only. The difference in P2 amplitude between self-focus and standard cues was correlated with social anxiety independent of depression. As hypothesized, socially anxious participants (n = 20) showed early selection and maintenance of disgust faces relative to neutral faces as indicated by the N2pc and CDA components. Nonanxious controls (n = 22) did not show these biases. During self-focus cues, controls showed marginal evidence of biased selection for disgust faces, whereas socially anxious subjects showed no bias in this condition. Controls showed an ipsilateral delay activity after being cued to attend to one hemifield. Overall, this study supports early and persistent attentional bias for social threat in socially anxious individuals. Furthermore, self-focus may disrupt these biases. These findings and supplementary data are discussed in light of cognitive models of social anxiety disorder, recent empirical findings, and treatment.     

Autobiographical memory bias in social anxiety

In social anxiety the psychological self is closely related to the feared stimulus. Socially anxious individuals are, by definition, concerned about how the self is perceived and evaluated by others. As autobiographical memory is strongly related to views of the self it follows that biases in autobiographical memory play an important role in social anxiety. In the present study high (n = 19) and low (n = 29) socially anxious individuals were compared on autobiographical memory bias, current goals, and self-discrepancy. Individuals high in social anxiety showed a bias towards recalling more negative and more social anxiety-related autobiographical memories, reported more current goals related to overcoming social anxiety, and showed larger self-discrepancies. The pattern of results is largely in line with earlier research in individuals with PTSD and complicated grief. This suggests that the relation between autobiographical memory bias and the self is a potentially valuable trans-diagnostic factor.     

Early information processing biases in social anxiety

Considerable controversy persists regarding the nature of threat-related attention biases in social anxiety. Previous studies have not considered how variations in the temporal and energetic dimensions of affective stimulus delivery interact with anxiety-related individual differences to predict biased attention. We administered a visual dot-probe task, using faces that varied in affective intensity (mild, moderate, strong) and presentation rate (100, 500, 1,250 ms) to a selected sample. The high, compared to the low, socially anxious group showed vigilance towards angry faces and emotionally ambiguous faces more generally during rapid (100 ms) presentations. By 1,250 ms, there was only a non-specific motor slowing associated with angry faces in the high socially anxious group. Findings suggest the importance of considering both chronometric and energetic dimensions of affective stimuli when examining anxiety-related attention biases. Future studies should consider using designs that more closely replicate aspects of real-world interaction to study processing biases in socially anxious populations.     

Social Anxiety and Specificity of Positive Alcohol Expectancies: Preliminary Findings

This preliminary study examined the relationship between social anxiety and specificity of positive alcohol outcome expectancies (AOE) in a community sample of 62 drinking adults. The sample was divided into subsets of socially anxious (n = 17) and nonsocially anxious (n = 45) men and women. The Drinking Expectancy Questionnaire (DEQ) and Alcohol Expectancies in Social Evaluative Situations Scale (AESES) were used to determine if groups differed in the general positive AOE they hold, or only in AOE specific to social situations. ANOVAs revealed that socially anxious individuals had greater positive AOE specific to social situations (DEQ—Assertion scale and AESES) than nonsocially anxious individuals, with no differences in other positive AOE. Partial correlations controlling for social anxiety revealed that AOE specific to social situations correlated with greater drinking and alcohol dependency levels. Findings indicate that identification of AOE specific to social situations may be useful in classifying socially anxious individuals at risk for alcoholism and as a focus of expectancy challenge strategies for individuals with co-occurring social anxiety and drinking problems.     

Early information processing biases in social anxiety

Considerable controversy persists regarding the nature of threat-related attention biases in social anxiety. Previous studies have not considered how variations in the temporal and energetic dimensions of affective stimulus delivery interact with anxiety-related individual differences to predict biased attention. We administered a visual dot-probe task, using faces that varied in affective intensity (mild, moderate, strong) and presentation rate (100, 500, 1,250 ms) to a selected sample. The high, compared to the low, socially anxious group showed vigilance towards angry faces and emotionally ambiguous faces more generally during rapid (100 ms) presentations. By 1,250 ms, there was only a non-specific motor slowing associated with angry faces in the high socially anxious group. Findings suggest the importance of considering both chronometric and energetic dimensions of affective stimuli when examining anxiety-related attention biases. Future studies should consider using designs that more closely replicate aspects of real-world interaction to study processing biases in socially anxious populations.     

Fear-relevant selective associations and social anxiety: absence of a positive bias

An illusory correlation paradigm was used to compare high and low socially anxious individuals' initial, on-line and a posteriori covariation estimates between emotional faces and aversive, pleasant and neutral outcomes. Overall, participants demonstrated an initial expectancy bias for aversive outcomes following angry faces, and pleasant outcomes following happy faces. On-line expectancy biases indicated that initial biases were extinguished during the task, with the exception of low socially anxious individuals who continued to over-associate positive social cues with pleasant outcomes. In addition to lacking this protective positive on-line bias, the high social anxiety group reported retrospectively more negative social cues than the low socially anxious group. Findings are discussed in relation to similar evidence from recent interpretive and memory paradigms.     

Individuals with Fear of Blushing Explicitly and Automatically Associate Blushing with Social Costs

To explain fear of blushing, it has been proposed that individuals with fear of blushing overestimate the social costs of their blushing. Current information-processing models emphasize the relevance of differentiating between more automatic and more explicit cognitions, as both types of cognitions may independently influence behavior. The present study tested whether individuals with fear of blushing expect blushing to have more negative social consequences than controls, both on an explicit level and on a more automatic level. Automatic associations between blushing and social costs were assessed in a treatment-seeking sample of individuals with fear of blushing who met DSM-IV criteria for social anxiety disorder (n = 49) and a non-anxious control group (n = 27) using a single-target Implicit Association Test (stIAT). In addition, participants’ explicit expectations about the social costs of their blushing were assessed. Individuals with fear of blushing showed stronger associations between blushing and negative outcomes, as indicated by both stIAT and self-report. The findings support the view that automatic and explicit associations between blushing and social costs may both help to enhance our understanding of the cognitive processes that underlie fear of blushing.     

Prognostic value of implicit and explicit self-associations for the course of depressive and anxiety disorders

Dysfunctional self-beliefs are assumed to play an important role in maintaining depression and anxiety. Current dual-process models emphasize the relevance of differentiating between implicit and explicit self-beliefs. Therefore, this study tested the prognostic value of automatic and explicit self-associations for the naturalistic course of depressive and anxiety disorders over two years follow-up. Both self-depressed and self-anxious associations were measured in unipolar depressed patients (n = 313), anxious patients (n = 566), and patients with comorbid depressive and anxiety disorders (n = 577) as part of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety. Outcomes showed that in single predictor models specifically automatic self-anxious associations were related to a reduced chance of remission from anxiety, whereas automatic self-depressed associations were related to a reduced chance of remission from depression. Explicit self-anxious associations and fearful avoidance behaviour showed independent predictive validity for remission from anxiety, whereas explicit self-depressed associations and having both major depressive disorder and dysthymia showed independent predictive validity for remission from depression. These findings are not only consistent with the view that both implicit and explicit dysfunctional self-associations are related to the course of anxiety and unipolar depressive disorders, but also suggest that both types of self-beliefs are proper targets for therapeutic interventions.     

Peer Perceptions of Social Skills in Socially Anxious and Nonanxious Adolescents

Previous studies using adult observers are inconsistent with regard to social skills deficits in nonclinical socially anxious youth. The present study investigated whether same age peers perceive a lack of social skills in the socially anxious. Twenty high and 20 low socially anxious adolescents (13–17 years old) were recorded giving a 5-min speech. Unfamiliar peer observers (12–17 years old) viewed the speech samples and rated four social skills: speech content, facial expressions, posture and body movement, and way of speaking. Peer observers perceived high socially anxious adolescents as significantly poorer than low socially anxious adolescents on all four social skills. Moreover, for all skills except facial expressions, group differences could not be attributed to adolescents’ self-reported level of depression. We suggest that therapists take the perceptions of same age peers into account when assessing the social skills of socially anxious youth.     

Social anxiety as a basis for friendship selection and socialization in adolescents' social networks

Socially anxious children and adolescents have previously been found to have friends with similarly socially anxious, withdrawn behavioral characteristics. How peers might socialize social anxiety over time has, however, not been thoroughly investigated. We examined this in a sample of 834 youths (339 girls and 495 boys; M=14.29), followed for 3 years. We used the social network analysis software SIENA to analyze the data. The results showed that youths who were socially anxious were less popular and chose fewer friends in the network. They also tended to choose friends who were socially anxious, and over time they influenced each other into becoming more socially anxious--over and above other effects. Finally, girls' social anxiety was more influenced than boys' by their friends' social anxiety levels. The results showed the significance of looking at socially anxious youths' friendships over time and embedded in social networks.     

Mental Imagery and Post-Event Processing in Anticipation of a Speech Performance Among Socially Anxious Individuals

The present study investigated whether post-event processing (PEP) involving mental imagery about a past speech is particularly detrimental for socially anxious individuals who are currently anticipating giving a speech. One hundred fourteen high and low socially anxious participants were told they would give a 5 min impromptu speech at the end of the experimental session. They were randomly assigned to one of three manipulation conditions: post-event processing about a past speech incorporating imagery (PEP-Imagery), semantic post-event processing about a past speech (PEP-Semantic), or a control condition, (n = 19 per experimental group, per condition [high vs low socially anxious]). After the condition inductions, individuals’ anxiety, their predictions of performance in the anticipated speech, and their interpretations of other ambiguous social events were measured. Consistent with predictions, high socially anxious individuals in the PEP-Imagery condition displayed greater anxiety than individuals in the other conditions immediately following the induction and before the anticipated speech task. They also interpreted ambiguous social scenarios in a more socially anxious manner than socially anxious individuals in the control condition. High socially anxious individuals made more negative predictions about their upcoming speech performance than low anxious participants in all conditions. The impact of imagery during post-event processing in social anxiety and its implications are discussed.     

Heartbeat perception in social anxiety before and during speech anticipation

According to current cognitive models of social phobia, individuals with social anxiety create a distorted image of themselves in social situations, relying, at least partially, on interoceptive cues. We investigated differences in heartbeat perception as a proxy of interoception in 48 individuals high and low in social anxiety at baseline and while anticipating a public speech. Results revealed lower error scores for high fearful participants both at baseline and during speech anticipation. Speech anticipation improved heartbeat perception in both groups only marginally. Eight of nine accurate perceivers as determined using a criterion of maximum difference between actual and counted beats were high socially anxious. Higher interoceptive accuracy might increase the risk of misinterpreting physical symptoms as visible signs of anxiety which then trigger negative evaluation by others. Treatment should take into account that in socially anxious individuals perceived physical arousal is likely to be accurate rather than false alarm.     

Social Anxiety and Attention away from Emotional Faces

A substantial literature indicates that anxiety is often associated with selective attention to threat cues. Socially anxious individuals are excessively concerned about negative evaluation by others. One might therefore predict that high social anxiety would be associated with selective attention to negative facial expressions. On the other hand, some recent models have suggested that social anxiety may be associated with reduced processing of external social cues. A modified dot-probe task was used to investigate face attention. High and low socially anxious individuals were presented with pairs of pictures, consisting of a face (positive, neutral, or negative) and a household object, under conditions of social-evaluative threat or no threat. The results indicated that, compared to low socially anxious individuals, high socially anxious individuals show an attentional bias away from emotional (positive and negative) faces but this effect is only observed under conditions of social-evaluative threat. Theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.     

Examining the dynamics of the implicit and the explicit self-concept in social anxiety: changes in the Implicit Association Test-Anxiety and the Social Phobia Anxiety Inventory following treatment

In this study, we analyzed changes in the strength of self-anxiety associations--as measured by the Implicit Association Test-Anxiety (IAT-Anxiety; Egloff & Schmukle, 2002) and the Social Phobia Anxiety Inventory (SPAI; Turner, Beidel, Dancu, & Stanley, 1989)--following treatment of social anxiety. We assessed socially anxious participants (N = 24) prior to and following a group-based treatment; and we assessed healthy controls (N = 24) at matched time points. Results showed (a) higher implicit and explicit anxiety in socially anxious participants (as compared to controls) prior to treatment and (b) reductions in IAT-Anxiety and SPAI scores of socially anxious participants following treatment. We discuss implications of these results for clinical applications of the IAT.     

Paternal Child-Rearing Style and Child Social Anxiety: Investigation of Child Perceptions and Actual Father Behavior

This study examined associations among perceived and actual father behavior and child social anxiety. Forty-eight children (22 high socially anxious, 26 low socially anxious) completed self-report measures of social anxiety, general anxiety, and depression. Children also completed a measure of perceived parental style and subsequently collaborated with their fathers on a challenging task (origami). After controlling for general anxiety and depression, fathers of high socially anxious children exhibited more controlling behavior during the origami task; high and low socially anxious children, however, did not differ behaviorally from one another. Perceptions of father child-rearing style did not differ as a function of child social anxiety, nor were significant relations found between perceived parenting and specific father behaviors. Findings underscore the importance of assessing various types of internalizing symptoms (i.e., controlling for shared construct variance), obtaining children's perceptions of parental style in conjunction with conducting behavioral observations, and including fathers in psychopathology research.     

Constructing a self: The role of self-structure and self-certainty in social anxiety

Current cognitive models stress the importance of negative self-perceptions in maintaining social anxiety, but focus predominantly on content rather than structure. Two studies examine the role of self-structure (self-organisation, self-complexity, and self-concept clarity) in social anxiety. In study one, self-organisation and self-concept clarity were correlated with social anxiety, and a step-wise multiple regression showed that after controlling for depression and self-esteem, which explained 35% of the variance in social anxiety scores, self-concept clarity uniquely predicted social anxiety and accounted for an additional 7% of the variance in social anxiety scores in an undergraduate sample (N = 95) and the interaction between self-concept clarity and compartmentalisation (an aspect of evaluative self-organisation) at step 3 of the multiple regression accounted for a further 3% of the variance in social anxiety scores. In study two, high (n = 26) socially anxious participants demonstrated less self-concept clarity than low socially anxious participants (n = 26) on both self-report (used in study one) and on computerised measures of self-consistency and confidence in self-related judgments. The high socially anxious group had more compartmentalised self-organisation than the low anxious group, but there were no differences between the two groups on any of the other measures of self-organisation. Self-complexity did not contribute to social anxiety in either study, although this may have been due to the absence of a stressor. Overall, the results suggest that self-structure has a potentially important role in understanding social anxiety and that self-concept clarity and other aspects of self-structure such as compartmentalisation interact with each other and could be potential maintaining factors in social anxiety. Cognitive therapy for social phobia might influence self-structure, and understanding the role of structural variables in maintenance and treatment could eventually help to improve treatment outcome.     

Attention to Positive and Negative Social-Evaluative Words: Investigating the Effects of Social Anxiety,Trait Anxiety and Social Threat

The study investigated how attention to negative (threatening) and positive social-evaluative words is affected by social anxiety, trait anxiety and the expectation of social threat. High and low socially anxious individuals carried out a modified dot-probe task either while expecting to give a speech or under non-threatening conditions. High socially anxious individuals showed no significant attentional bias towards or away from social-evaluative words. This result significantly contrasted with an identical design that showed avoidance of emotional faces in high socially anxious participants drawn from the same population (Mansell et al ., 1999). Participants who expected to give a speech showed less attentional avoidance of negative and positive social-evaluative words. High trait anxiety was associated with selective attention to negative relative to positive social-evaluative words, consistent with earlier findings of attention to threat cues in high trait-anxious individuals. Implications for designing attention tasks and attentional bias across different dimensions of anxiety are discussed.