Children with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) characterized by persistent shyness and anxiety in social or performance situation, exhibit social skills deficits. These deficits include difficulty initiating conversations, maintaining eye contact, and taking turns when speaking, which in turn leads to impairments in their daily interactions and development of peer relationships (Greco, 2005; Miers, 2010). Although there are many subjective assessments for treatment outcomes for children with SAD, in order to become more thorough and effective when assessing treatment outcomes, more objective measures of actual behaviors are needed. This study uses digital vocal analysis to examine vocal parameters associated with anxiety such as pitch and volume in children with SAD pre and post treatment. Measuring vocal parameters during role-play behavioral assessment tasks allowed us to examine whether the software was capable of detecting differences in vocal characteristics that are consistent with the clinical presentation of the disorder. Children with SAD showed differences in vocal characteristics pre to post treatment, in regards to pitch, pitch variability, volume, and volume variability. There were significant changes in volume pre to post treatment, however the changes in pitch, pitch variability, and volume variability were not significant. These results suggest that post SET-C treatment, certain vocal characteristics, (one of the social skills deficits exhibited by children with SAD) improved. Implications of the findings are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-2775 |
| Date | 01 January 2012 |
| Creators | Kroytor, Anya |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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