Abstract
AbstractSocial anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders and becomes chronic if left untreated. Even when it is treated, outcomes are less promising than for other anxiety disorders. Thus, many are interested in preventing SAD and in the mechanisms involved in the development of SAD. In this article, I propose in a new model that disturbances in social cognition (cognitive biases, emotion recognition and understanding, negative expectations) and dysregulated social emotions (social fear and self‐conscious emotional arousal) in toddlerhood and early childhood lead to avoidance and high levels of anxiety in social situations. When repeated over time, these impair daily functioning and result in a disorder. Biological factors (e.g., fearful temperament), environmental factors (e.g., parental mentalizing), and past experiences may be distal factors that contribute to the development of SAD via disturbed sociocognitive processing and dysregulated emotions. Based on this model, I conclude by describing clinical implications and recommendations for research.
Highlights
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders and becomes chronic if left untreated
SAD is typically diagnosed in late childhood or adolescence, but high levels of social anxiety are seen in early childhood and pose a risk for developing SAD (Nikolic, 2020)
Whereas attentional bias to threat and dysregulated fear seem to be important for developing SAD in infancy and toddlerhood, disturbances in emotion recognition, emotion understanding, and heightened self-conscious emotional arousal seem to be important for the development of SAD in early childhood
Summary
ABSTRACT—Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders and becomes chronic if left untreated. Children with social anxiety display attribution biases, attributing negative events to internal causes and positive events to external causes (Haller, Raeder, Scerif, Kadosh, & Lau, 2016) These biases may result from deficits in sociocognitive skills, such as emotion recognition and mental state understanding (Banerjee & Henderson, 2001). Children with social anxiety show deficits in recognizing (Nikolic et al, 2019) and understanding the causes of others’ emotions and other mental states as early as age 4 (Banerjee & Henderson, 2001; Colonnesi, Nikolic, de Vente, & B€ogels, 2017) Because they have difficulty understanding other people, they may experience social situations as ambiguous and unpredictable, and may display cognitive biases in interpreting and attributing social events (Clark & Wells, 1995). Attentional bias to threat Elevated self-focused and others-focused attention Disturbances in mental states recognition and understanding
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