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Selective mutism(SM) is a !disorder in which children capable of speech do not speak in certain situations. SM is often related to social phobia (SP); however, the exact relationship between the two conditions is unclear. To obtain a better understanding of the relationship of SM and SP, 8 children with SM, 8 with SP, and 7 typically developing children (ranging in age from 7-13) were compared on measures of physiology(heart rate, skin temperature, and skin conductance responses), and self-report and parent-report measures. The physiological measures were recorded during two social interaction tasks (a role-play task and a reading aloud task). Despite our expectation that children with SM should show higher physiological arousal during these tasks, the results revealed no conclusive physiological differences between the two groups. These finding suggest that the current conceptualization of selective mutism simply as an extreme form of social phobia may be incorrect.

The main topic of this thesis is the subjective experience of anxiety. The author has attempted to secede from the strictly psychological level, therefore there are authors dealing with the overlap of human existence included. As a result, the thesis is also a partly philosophical view of anxiety. However, given the focus of the author, the greater part of the work is based on the psychological view. In the practical part, the hypothesis that the consciousness of the meaning of life has a certain influence on the experience of anxiety was confirmed. However, this effect is not as large and as clear as Frankl describes in his work.