Do pharmacological and behavioral interventions differentially affect treatment outcome for children with social phobia?

In a randomized trial for children with social phobia (SP), Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children (SET-C; a treatment consisting of exposure and social skills training) and fluoxetine were more effective than pill placebo in reducing social distress and behavioral avoidance, but only SET-C demonstrated significantly improved overall social skill and social competence. In the current study, the authors examined the specific social skills enhanced by SET-C using a recently developed coding schema. At posttreatment, children treated with SET-C displayed a more effective ability to manage the conversational topic (pragmatic social behaviors) and more appropriate motor movement, facial orientation, and posture (paralinguistic social behaviors) than children treated with fluoxetine or placebo.