Lower Levels Of Social Anxiety Research Articles

School-Based Treatment for Anxious African-American Adolescents: A Controlled Pilot Study

To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a school-based group cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) for anxiety disorders with African-American adolescents. Twelve adolescents (mean age = 15.6 years) with anxiety disorders were randomly assigned to CBT (n = 6) or a group attention-support control condition (AS-Control; n = 6). Both groups met for 10 sessions in the same high school. Key treatment ingredients in CBT involved exposure, relaxation, social skills, and cognitive restructuring. Key ingredients in AS-Control involved therapist and peer support. At pre- and posttreatment, diagnostic interviews were conducted, and adolescents completed self-report measures of anxiety. At posttreatment and among those who attended more than one treatment session, 3/4 adolescents in CBT no longer met diagnostic criteria for their primary anxiety disorder, compared with 1/5 in AS-Control. Clinician ratings of impairment and self-report levels of overall anxiety were significantly lower at posttreatment in CBT compared with AS-Control. Teenagers in both groups reported lower levels of social anxiety from pre- to posttreatment. Findings support the feasibility of implementing a manual-based CBT in an urban school setting. Responder rates among African-American adolescents were similar to those found in studies with white youths.

Cognitive and Psychological Factors Underlying Secondary School Students' Feelings Towards Group Work

ABSTRACT Two-hundred-and-ninety secondary school students from Years 7, 9 and 11 completed questionnaires relating to motivational goals, metacognitive awareness, need for affiliation, social anxiety and feelings towards group work. Factor analysis revealed three attitudes towards participation in group work: a preference for group environments, a preference for individual work environments, and a sense of discomfort in group environments. Students reporting a preference for group work also indicated higher levels of sociability, lower levels of social anxiety, stronger mastery and performance goals, and greater levels of metacognitive awareness. Students expressing a preference for individual work environments reported lower levels of sociability and higher levels of social anxiety, but were not differentiated on any of the cognitive measures. Students reporting discomfort in groups similarly reported enhanced levels of social anxiety combined with lower levels of sociability, but also indicated lower levels of metacognitive awareness. Results are discussed in the context of current theoretical and empirical work on group-based learning.

Relationship Between Youth and Parent Perceptions of Family Environment and Social Anxiety

This study concurrently examined the relationship between adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ child-rearing styles and family environment and their reports of social anxiety. Adolescents reporting higher levels of social anxiety perceived their parents as being more socially isolating, overly concerned about others’ opinions, ashamed of their shyness and poor performance, and less socially active than did youth reporting lower levels of social anxiety. Parent perceptions of child-rearing styles and family environment, however, did not differ between parents of socially anxious and nonsocially anxious adolescents. Results are comparable to studies using adult retrospective reports and are discussed with regard to the role of the family environment in the development of social anxiety.

Client by treatment interactions in response acquisition and cognitive restructuring approaches

The present study compared response acquisition and cognitive restructuring in treating socially anxious college freshmen. Forty-two male and female subjects were randomly assigned to cognitive restructuring, reponse acquistion, and attention placebo control groups. Dependent measures, taken at pre- and posttreatment, included self-reported assertiveness, social anxiety and faulty cognitive self-appraisal, and analogue observational measures of skill and anxiety. Client by treatment interactions indicated that the effects of cognitive restructuring were negligible for subjects initially reporting relatively lower levels of social anxiety and faulty cognitive self-appraisal. Response acquistion, in constrast, was equally effective for subjects at lower and higher levels of these two variables.