Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed June 8, 2007). PDF text: 155 p. UMI publication number: AAT 3251375. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

No description available.

Children with Asperger's Disorder are considered to have impairments in social interaction, but to date few studies have empirically addressed this issue. This study examined the existence of social skills deficits in children with Asperger's Disorder, children with social phobia, and children with no psychological disorder. Using direct observation of social skills during role-play tasks, blinded observers rated an overall impression of social effectiveness and three specific categories of social skill: pragmatic behavior (e.g., effort to maintain conversation, latency to respond), speech and prosodic behavior (e.g., vocal inflection, voice volume), and paralinguistic conversational behaviors (e.g., facial orientation, motor movement). Children with Asperger's Disorder did not display predicted social skills deficits when compared to typically developing children. When compared to children with social phobia, children with Asperger's Disorder were rated as significantly more socially effective and were rated as more skilled on the molecular conversational behaviors that create an overall impression of social effectiveness. These results suggest that children with Asperger's Disorder display adequate social skill during brief social interactions. Furthermore, the social skills deficits present in children with social phobia are not the same deficits found in children with Asperger's Disorder. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-126). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

abstract: The purpose of this thesis study was to evaluate the nature of social anxiety in clinic-referred African American children versus their Caucasian counterparts. In particular, social anxiety symptom endorsement along the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory Scale for Children (SPAI-C; Beidel, Turner, & Morris, 1995) was examined in a sample of 107 African American and 364 Caucasian children (ages 7- to 17-years old) referred for anxiety. To evaluate symptom endorsement, simple descriptive analyses were conducted whereas measurement invariance tests were examined using confirmatory factor analyses. For the most commonly endorsed items, African American and Caucasian children shared seven of the top 10 most commonly identified social anxiety symptoms. Similar social fears across ethnicity focused on "assertiveness in situations perceived to be difficult" and ""speaking to large groups of peers they do not know." Findings also showed that African American children were more likely to report symptoms of "shaking when in social situations" than Caucasian children, and Caucasian children were more likely to report symptoms of "embarrassment when in front of adults" compared to African American children, but this was also on the basis of two items. When it came to the five factors of the SPAI-C, results showed measurement invariance across African American and Caucasian children. Overall, there were more similarities than differences between African American and Caucasian children in social anxiety symptoms based on the SPAI-C. Findings from this thesis study shed light on how to best accurately identify social anxiety among African American children compared to Caucasians, a contribution that can potentially impact assessment, treatment planning, and program response evaluation. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2013

Die Brief Social Phobia Scale – German version (BSPS-G) ist ein Kurzinterview zum Screening sozialer Ängste. Dabei werden Schwere oder Verlauf einer bereits diagnostizierten sozialen Angststörung erfasst. Im Folgenden wird der Hintergrund dargelegt und eine Kurzbeschreibung des englischsprachigen Originals (BSPS) gegeben: Die soziale Phobie ist gekennzeichnet durch ausgeprägte und anhaltende Angst, sich in sozialen oder Leistungssituationen peinlich zu verhalten, gedemütigt zu werden oder bestimmte Körpersymptome zu zeigen (Diagnostisches und Statistisches Manual psychischer Störungen, DSM-IV-TR [Saß et al., 2003]). Die Prävalenzraten liegen zwischen 6,7% [Fehm et al., 2005] und 12,1% [Kessler et al., 2005] und bei bis zu 25% für subklinische Ängste, die in Schwere und Beeinträchtigung häufig dem Vollbild ähnlich sind [Beesdo et al., 2007; Knappe et al., 2009]. Zur diagnostischen Erfassung der sozialen Phobie liegen zahlreiche Selbsteinschätzungsverfahren vor, aber kaum Fremdbeurteilungsverfahren [Mitte et al., 2007]. Als Interviewverfahren hat sich die Liebowitz Skala (Liebowitz Soziale Angst Skala, LSAS) [Stangier und Heidenreich, 2005] etabliert. Die BSPS hat demgegenüber die Vorteile, dass sie viel ökonomischer ist und explizit typische Körpersymptome erfasst, die soziale Ängste sowohl begleiten als auch auslösen können. Die Validierung der englischsprachigen Originalversion der BSPS zeigte sehr gute Kennwerte für die Test-Retest-Reliabilität (rtt = 0,91) und die interne Konsistenz (Cronbachs α = 0,82) sowie gute konvergente und diskriminante Validität und Änderungssensitivität. Als Cut-Off-Wert wurde ein Summenwert von 20 Punkten bestimmt [Davidson et al., 1997]. / Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.

Thesis (MA (Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2004. / The main objective of the study was to adapt the Implicit Association Task (IAT) to asses implicit self-relevant fear associations in individuals suffering from social phobia and panic disorder. This involved the development of computerbased word stimuli classification tasks in which participants were expected to classify individually presented words belonging to one of four word categories, namely self-related ‘me’ words, other-related ‘not-me’ words, threat-related words (physical or social threat) and corresponding safety-related words. Two response keys on the computer were to be used, each representing two word categories during a specific trial (e.g., the one representing ‘me’ and ‘threat’, and the other ‘not-me’ and ‘safety’ words). The demanded task was to classify the presented words as quickly and accurately as possible. This resulted in the construction of the Physical Threat Implicit Association Task (PIAT) and the Social Threat Implicit Association Task (SIAT). Both IAT versions were administered to a group of 17 participants diagnosed with social phobia, 17 diagnosed with panic disorder, and 17 ‘normal’ controls. Fear-domain specific self-threat association biases were expected for the social phobics on the SIAT, for the panickers on the PIAT, as well as significant differences with the performances of the control group on the IAT tasks. A secondary objective of the study was to investigate the relationships between the IATs and performances on a variety of self-report scales, namely the Social Phobia Inventory, the Panic Disorder Severity Scale, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Beck Depression Inventory-II. In contrast to what was expected, the results of both the PIAT and SIAT did not demonstrate a facilitation of the classification task during trials when ‘me’ and ‘threat’ words were allocated to one category (i.e., response key), and ‘notme’ and ‘safety’ to the other. On the contrary, all three participant groups demonstrated significant effects in the opposite direction. Furthermore, the differences between the groups on both IATs were insignificant. With the exception of a significant, negative correlation between the results on the SIAT and the Social Phobia Inventory for the social phobia group, all the other IAT and self-report scale correlations were insignificant. The results were explained in terms of a newly proposed ‘two-forces’ cognitive theory. It was speculated that the IAT effects might have been the result of two opposing forces operating at different stages of the information processing system. This is namely (a) a disruption of performance by attention diversion during an early pre-attentive stage of processing, versus (b) a facilitation of the classification task by implicit association during later elaborative stages of processing, with the former apparently making the major contribution to the final IAT effect. This may be a phenomenon unique to anxiety disorders. The implications for future research of the findings and the newly proposed theory were also discussed.

<p>Kognitiv beteendeterapi (KBT) avser att hjälpa personer med problembeteenden så att fokus ligger på nuet och framtiden, vilka mål som bör sättas upp så att en positiv förändring kan ske. KBT syftar till att människor ska kunna leva i samhället utan begränsning och med bättre livskvalitet. Denna kvalitativa studie visar hur KBT kan användas för social fobi och depressionsproblematik. Fem deltagare intervjuades, två psykiatrisjuksköterskor och tre psykologer. Alla arbetar utifrån KBT och studien visar deras upplevelser av metoden samt hur behandlingarna kan se ut. De evidensbaserade metoderna inom KBT, beteendeaktivering för deprimerade patienter och exponering för patienter med social fobi, är en del av det som behandlarna arbetar med och som de uttrycker ger en positiv effekt hos patienter.</p>

The effectiveness of a Group CBT programme for Social Phobia was assessed using 18 participants recruited from a routine practice setting. Therapy was based on CBT techniques as practiced routinely by the clinical practice, and were not modified for the study by factors such as strict exclusion criteria and adherence to rigid manualised treatments. Pre- to post-treatment effect sizes compared favourably with those reported in a meta-analysis (Taylor, 1996). The findings provide support for the accessibility and effectiveness of group CBT techniques for Social Phobia in field settings. While some individuals within the sample experienced dramatic improvement, some remained severely impaired even at post-treatment. The results of Hierarchical Multiple Regressions indicated that lower levels of pre-treatment depression severity, higher levels of attendance, and greater homework compliance, were predictive of more improvement on some, but not all, measures of outcome. Implications for treatment are discussed.

The term "attention placebo" has been used in an imprecise and often seemingly thoughtless way for decades, and it is often confusing to encounter "attention placebo group" in outcome studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate attention placebo empirically, focusing on anxiety or phobia related problems. The two aims were (1) to describe and summarize how researchers define attention placebo in empirical studies and the intervention procedures involved in these studies; and (2) to explore the possibility of estimating the magnitude of the attention placebo effects on anxiety or phobia related problems.A thorough literature search was carried out with the keywords of attention placebo synonyms and the resulting list of 1304 articles was screened for unique empirical articles on anxiety or phobia related problems. A total of 545 articles were identified as attention placebo empirical studies, and 83 involved anxiety or phobia related problems. These 83 constituent articles were coded for the purpose of qualitative overview, and 63 articles with sufficient data were included in the meta-analysis of attention placebo effects.The results of the qualitative overview of attention placebo on anxiety or phobia related problems showed that most articles did not discuss explicitly any rationale for using an attention placebo group, but simply included one as a comparison group. The arrangements for attention placebo interventions were diverse and often reflected little concern for emulating the nonspecific features of the treatment(s) of interest. Two meta-analyses were performed based on the comparison of attention placebo and a no-treatment control, and attention placebo and the verum. The overall estimated effect of attention placebo is Hedges's g=0.32, a small effect, significantly different from the effect size of the other control groups. Compared to the verum, the effects of attention placebo are not consistent in magnitude but were nearly all smaller than the effects of the verum treatments. Meta-regression and subgroup analyses indicated that estimating attention placebo effects is a sensible and meaningful research activity.In conclusion, attention placebo is not so much about attention, and it is possible to estimate the effects of attention placebo.