An investigation into the lower peer liking of anxious than nonanxious children

Social Anxiety Disorder: Associations with Peer-Liking, Discrimination, and Prejudicial Feelings in Early Adolescent Girls

Social anxiety can have an adverse effect on social connections, educational achievement, and wellbeing. However, the extent to which students stigmatize their peers with social anxiety disorder (SAD) in female educational settings remains unknown. This study investigated the relationship between SAD, peer-liking and stigma in a cohort of early adolescent girls. The sample was 103 sixth and seventh graders attending three girls' schools in Australia. The students, aged between 10- and 13-years, were randomly allocated to either a control (n = 52) or experimental (n = 51) group. Participants completed an online survey while at school to examine their responses to one of two age-and-gender matched vignettes: a hypothetical peer with SAD (experimental condition), or without SAD (control condition). Contrary to expectations, group comparisons revealed that students with the SAD vignette liked their peer more than students with the non-SAD vignette. Also, students endorsed higher levels of pity, lower levels of fear, but similar levels of anger when considering their SAD (versus non-SAD) peer. In the SAD group, higher levels of pity were associated with greater peer-liking. The opposite pattern was evident in response to the non-SAD peer. Importantly, students discriminated less (preferred less social distance) in response to their peer with SAD. This points to the potential benefit of adolescent peer programs that aim to promote positive peer-relationships as a protective factor for students with SAD. Future research may examine gender and socio-economically diverse students to increase the confidence with which findings can be generalized to other educational settings.

Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents: A summary and overview of the literature

Considerable work has advanced understanding of the nature, causes, management, and prevention of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents over the past 30 years. Prior to this time the primary focus was on school refusal and specific phobias. It is now recognised that children and adolescents experience the full gamut of anxiety disorders in very similar ways to adults and that anxiety disorders in the paediatric years can predict a lifelong mental-health struggle. Given the vast array of specific studies in this field, the current review summarises current knowledge about these high prevalence disorders, points to overarching limitations, and suggests potentially important future directions. Following a brief historical overview, the review summarises knowledge about demographic and epidemiological characteristics, distal and proximal risk factors, current treatment directions, and prevention. There is still a great deal to learn about the causes and treatments of child and adolescent anxiety disorders. By amalgamating our current knowledge, this review provides a window to the research directions that are likely to lead to future advances.

Die soziale Integration von Schülerinnen und Schülern mit sozialer Unsicherheit

Zusammenfassung. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen sozialer Integration und sozialer Unsicherheit. Ausgehend von dem mehrdimensionalen Modell sozialer Integration ( Koster, Nakken, Pijl & van Houten, 2009 ) wird diese differenziert anhand der Dimensionen Beziehungen, Kontakte, Akzeptanz durch Mitschülerinnen und Mitschüler und eigene Wahrnehmung analysiert. Hierfür wurden Daten von N = 617 Kindern aus insgesamt 28 Schulklassen der dritten und vierten Jahrgangsstufe geprüft. Die Ergebnisse der Mehrebenenanalysen zeigen einen signifikanten negativen Zusammenhang zwischen sozialer Unsicherheit und sozialer Integration in drei der vier Dimensionen (Beziehungen, eigene Wahrnehmung und Akzeptanz). Die Ergebnisse für die einzelnen Dimensionen werden diskutiert und es werden Implikationen für die Forschung und pädagogische Praxis abgeleitet.

Adolescent Internalizing Symptoms and the "Tightknittedness" of Friendship Groups

Adolescents with depression have lower peer status overall, but tend to befriend each other. We examined the "tightknittedness" of their friendship groups by testing whether adolescent friendship groups' average levels of or variability in internalizing symptoms predict group cohesiveness. We used four waves (9th-12th grades) of survey and social network data on 3,013 friendship groups from the PROmoting School-Community-University Partnerships to Enhance Resilience study. Friendship groups with higher average depressive symptoms were less cohesive; groups with higher average anxiety symptoms had greater reciprocity. Groups with greater variability in depressive symptoms had greater density; variability in anxiety symptoms was not consistently associated with cohesion. The friendship groups of depressed adolescents appear less cohesive than the "typical" adolescent friendship group.

Direct Aggression and Generalized Anxiety in Adolescence: Heterogeneity in Development and Intra-Individual Change

Co-occurrence of aggression and anxiety might change during adolescence, or stay stable. We studied change and stability of four types of co-occurrence regarding direct aggression and anxiety in adolescence: an anxious and non-aggressive type, an aggressive and non-anxious type, a comorbid aggressive-anxious type and a no problems type. We applied a person-centered approach to assess increases and decreases of these types, and tested various models of intra-individual change of the types: the stability, acting out and failure models. We used data from a five-wave study of 923 early-to-middle and 390 middle-to-late adolescents (48.5 % male), thereby covering the ages of 12-20. We observed accelerated development in the older cohort: adolescents tended to grow faster out of the aggressive types in middle-to-late adolescence than in early-to-middle adolescence. We observed one other group-dependent pattern of heterogeneity in development, namely "gender differentiation": gender differences in aggression and generalized anxiety became stronger over time. We found support for two perspectives on intra-individual change of the four types, namely the stability and the acting out perspective. The no problems--and to a lesser extent the anxious--type proved to be stable across time. Acting out was found in early-to-middle adolescents, males, and adolescents with poorer-quality friendships. In all three groups, there were substantial transitions from the anxious type to the aggressive type during 4 years (between 20 and 41 %). Remarkably, acting out was most prevalent in subgroups that, generally speaking, are more vulnerable for aggressive behavior, namely early-to-middle adolescents and males. We interpret acting out as the attempt of adolescents to switch from anxiety to instrumental aggression, in order to become more visible and obtain an autonomous position in the adolescent world. Acting out contributed to the explanation of accelerated development and gender differentiation. We also observed an increase of adolescents with no problems. These findings highlight that the co-occurrence of aggression and anxiety changes considerably during adolescence, but also that the anxious and no problems types are quite stable in this period.