<p> Stuttering and social anxiety disorder (SAD) share characteristics such as fear and anxiety toward social situations. Despite similarities, the underlying cognitive biases that perpetuate these characteristics in SAD have only begun to be studied in stuttering. We investigated judgment bias, the overestimation of probability and cost of negative outcomes for social situations, in a sample of persons who stutter (PWS) and a sample of age- and gender-matched typically fluent controls (NPWS). There were no between-group differences for trait anxiety. Although results indicated no between-group differences in judgment bias for social situations, further investigation revealed significant differences in judgment bias for social situations between PWS with high FNE and PWS with low FNE. Group differences were observed between PWS with high FNE, PWS with low FNE, and NPWS for distribution of judgment bias for different types of situations. PWS with high FNE perceived positive and mildly negative social scenarios as more threatening that the other two groups did. Future directions to evaluate potential treatment options for PWS such as measurement of faulty attention or interpretation bias in PWS are discussed.</p>

<p>Social cognition is a comprehensive term used to describe knowledge and skills that are applied to social situations and skills used to understand others. These skills include emotion perception, problem solving, executive functioning, and self-cognition. This study investigated the effectiveness of specific intervention strategies on social cognitive skills. The intervention strategies included activities for abstract thinking, emotion competence, Theory of Mind (ToM), and self-regulation of behaviors. Currently, little research exists to describe evidence based effective intervention strategies to improve social cognitive skills. The retrospective case study was completed with a female participant who was 11-years, 3 months old at the time of intervention. Data recorded from 20 intervention sessions was analyzed to determine the effectiveness of employed social cognition intervention tasks. Results indicated improvements in abstract thinking during a Mystery Box activity. Additionally, results showed the participant made improvements in her understanding of social cognition through use of social vocabulary and self-monitoring. Findings from the present study concluded that using concrete vocabulary for social concepts can improve an individual?s social communication skills.