Social skills deficits and self-appraisal biases in children with social anxiety disorder

Lowered social motivation is associated with adolescent attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and social anxiety symptoms

BACKGROUND

Difficulties in social skills are highly prevalent in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), however, the reasons for these social difficulties are poorly understood. This study aimed to understand social motivation in children (aged 5-8) and adolescents (aged 13-17) with and without ADHD, and the relationship between social anxiety and social motivation in youth with ADHD.

METHOD

204 parents of children and adolescents with and without ADHD completed online questionnaires on social motivation, social anxiety, and ADHD symptoms.

RESULTS

Adolescents with ADHD had significantly lower social motivation than typically developing adolescents, and children with ADHD. Higher social anxiety significantly predicted lowered social motivation in participants with ADHD.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings indicate a unique pattern of social motivation in ADHD, specifically a reduction during adolescence, reflecting social intervention inefficacy. Additionally, these findings establish a link between social motivation and social anxiety, suggesting that they may act as barriers to social intervention.

Adaptation and validation of two annotation scales for assessing social skills in a corpus of multimodal collaborative interactions

Context

Behavioral observation scales are important for understanding and assessing social skills. In the context of collaborative problem-solving (CPS) skills, considered essential in the 21st century, there are no validated scales in French that can be adapted to different CPS tasks. The aim of this study is to adapt and validate, by annotating a new video corpus of dyadic interactions that we have collected, two observational scales allowing us to qualitatively assess CPS skills: the Social Performance Rating Scale (SPRS) and the Social Skills of Collaboration Scale (SSC).

Method

The construct validity of these two scales was assessed by exploratory factor analysis and inter-item correlations. We also checked inter-judge agreement using inter-class correlation coefficients. Internal consistency was determined using Cronbach's alpha and convergent and divergent validity by assessing correlations between the two scales and measures of depression and alexithymia. Finally, the discriminative properties of the two scales were analyzed by comparing the scores obtained by a group of anxious individuals and a non-anxious control group.

Results

The results show that our two scales have excellent inter-item correlations. Internal consistency is excellent (alpha SPRS =0.90; SSC = 0.93). Inter-rater agreement ranged from moderate to high. Finally, convergent validity was significant with the alexithymia scale, as was divergent validity with the depression scale. Anxious individuals had lower scores on both scales than non-anxious individuals.

Conclusion

Both scales show good psychometric properties for assessing social skills relevant to different collaborative tasks. They also identify individuals with difficulties in social interaction. Thus, they could allow monitoring the effectiveness of training social skills useful in CPS.

Prevalence of social anxiety disorder and symptoms among Chinese children, adolescents and young adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis

The objective of the study is to provide a reliable estimate of the pooled prevalence of social anxiety disorder (SAD) and social anxiety symptoms (SAS) among children, adolescents, and young adults (CAYA) in China. Meta-analysis is used to provide pooled-prevalence rate of SAD and SAS. Literature searches were conducted in both English and Chinese databases from the database's inception to April 2019. Eleven studies were identified for SAD, and 17 were included for SAS. The results revealed a pooled prevalence of SAD of 2.1% (95% CI: 1.2-3.8%) with high between-studies heterogeneity (Q = 1,055.2, I 2 = 99.1%, p < 0.001). The pooled prevalence estimate of SAS was 23.5% (95% CI: 18.6-29.3%), also with significant heterogeneity (Q = 1,019.3, I 2 = 98.4%, p < 0.001). Different diagnostic tools or self-report scales reported significant different prevalence of SAD or SAS. Further analysis stratified by gender, age, sampling methods, economic status, and risk of bias were performed. Limitations include the high level of heterogeneity between studies, inadequate number of the studies, and significant differences in prevalence caused by measurements.

Systematic review registration

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42020149591, identifier: PROSPERO CRD42020149591.

Are fearful boys at higher risk for anxiety? Person-centered profiles of toddler fearful behavior predict anxious behaviors at age 6

Dysregulated fear (DF), the presence of fearful behaviors in both low-threat and high-threat contexts, is associated with child anxiety symptoms during early childhood (e.g., Buss et al., 2013). However, not all children with DF go on to develop an anxiety disorder (Buss and McDoniel, 2016). This study leveraged the data from two longitudinal cohorts (N = 261) to (1) use person-centered methods to identify profiles of fearful temperament, (2) replicate the findings linking DF to anxiety behaviors in kindergarten, (3) test if child sex moderates associations between DF and anxiety behaviors, and (4) examine the consistency of findings across multiple informants of child anxiety behaviors. We identified a normative fear profile (low fear in low-threat contexts; high fear in high-threat contexts), a low fear profile (low fear across both low- and high-threat contexts) and a DF profile (high fear across both low- and high-threat contexts). Results showed that probability of DF profile membership was significantly associated with child self-reported overanxiousness, but not with parent-reported overanxiousness. Associations between DF profile membership and overanxiousness was moderated by child sex such that these associations were significant for boys only. Additionally, results showed that probability of DF profile membership was associated with both parent-reported social withdrawal and observations of social reticence, but there were no significant associations with child self-report of social withdrawal. Results highlight the importance of considering person-centered profiles of fearful temperament across different emotion-eliciting contexts, and the importance of using multiple informants to understand associations with temperamental risk for child anxiety.