The Effectiveness of School-Based Skills-Training Programs Reducing Performance or Social Anxiety: Two Randomized Controlled Trials.

Background: Given that high levels of stress during adolescence are associated with negative consequences, it is important that adolescents with psychological needs are supported at an early stage, for instance with interventions at school. However, knowledge about the potential of school-based programs targeting adolescents with psychological needs, aimed at reducing school or social stress, is lacking.

Objective: The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of two targeted school-based skills-training programs, addressing either skills to deal with performance anxiety or social skills.

Interpretation Biases in Social Scenarios and Social Anxiety: The Role of Safety Behaviors.

Background: Interpretation bias (IB) and safety behaviors (SB) are maintenance mechanisms of social anxiety (SA). However, few studies have examined the role of IB and SB together in explaining SA. The objective of this study was to determine whether SB explains the association between IB and SA.

Trajectories of adolescent perceived stress and symptoms of depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adolescents might be particularly affected by the drastic social changes as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, given the increased stress-sensitivity and importance of the social environment in this developmental phase. In order to examine heterogeneity during the pandemic, the current study aimed to identify whether subgroups of adolescents could be distinguished based on their levels of perceived stress and symptoms of depression and anxiety. In addition, we examined which prepandemic factors predicted these trajectories.

Concurrent and Prospective Associations Between Social Anxiety and Responses to Stress in Adolescence.

Several studies have investigated the relationship between adolescents' responses to stress and general anxiety and depression, but only few studies addressed the relationship between responses to stress and social anxiety. The current three-wave longitudinal study, that covered a period of 5 years with a time interval of on average two years between waves, examined concurrent as well as prospective relations between adolescents' self-reported stress responses, including coping responses, and self-perceived social anxiety. Both the predictive power of social anxiety for different stress responses and, reversely, of stress responses for social anxiety were evaluated.

Prepandemic Risk Factors of COVID-19-Related Concerns in Adolescents During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

To identify adolescents who may be at risk for adverse outcomes, we examined the extent of COVID-19-related concerns reported by adolescents and investigated which prepandemic risk and protective factors predicted these concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dutch adolescents (N = 188; M  = 13.49, SD = .

The effects of school-based interventions on physiological stress in adolescents: A meta-analysis.

Chronic stress is associated with dysregulations in the physiological stress system, resulting in diverse negative developmental outcomes. Since adolescence is a period characterized by increased stress-sensitivity, and schools are an important environment for the developing adolescent, school-based interventions promoting psychosocial functioning are of particular interest to prevent adverse outcomes. The present study therefore aimed to investigate the effectiveness of such interventions on hypothalamic pituitary adrenal-axis (i.

Can Schools Reduce Adolescent Psychological Stress? A Multilevel Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of School-Based Intervention Programs.

Increased levels of psychological stress during adolescence have been associated with a decline in academic performance, school dropout and increased risk of mental health problems. Intervening during this developmental period may prevent these problems. The school environment seems particularly suitable for interventions and over the past decade, various school-based stress reduction programs have been developed.

A cross-sectional and longitudinal network analysis approach to understanding connections among social anxiety components in youth.

As proposed in a prominent developmental model, social anxiety has different manifestations: social fear, shy temperament, anxious cognitions, and avoidance of social situations. Drawing from this model, we used the network approach to psychopathology to gain a detailed understanding of specific social anxiety components and their associations. The current article investigated (a) how social anxiety components are interconnected within a network, and (b) the consistency of the network over time, in a community sample of children and adolescents.

The effectiveness of school-based skills-training programs promoting mental health in adolescents: a study protocol for a randomized controlled study.

Background: Adolescence is a period of elevated stress sensitivity, which places adolescents at increased risk of developing mental health problems such as burnout, depression, anxiety, and externalizing problems. Early intervention of psychological needs and low-threshold care addressing such needs may prevent this dysfunctional development. Schools may provide an important environment to identify and address psychological needs.

Cultural evidence for interpretation bias as a feature of social anxiety in Chinese adolescents.

Interpretation bias (IB), defined as the tendency to interpret ambiguous social situations in a threatening manner, has increasingly been studied in children and adolescents. Compared to Western samples, the relation between IB and social anxiety in Chinese youth has received little attention. The present study was to mainly examine the relationship between IB and social anxiety among Chinese adolescents.

Social anxiety and interpretation bias: examining clinical and subclinical components in adolescents.

Background: This study aimed to examine whether different components of interpretation bias are clinical or dimensional features of adolescent social anxiety. The study analyzed the components of this bias at a subclinical level of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and compared these with a clinical sample of adolescents with SAD.

Method: Adolescents in the age range 13-17 years participated.

The Role of Performance Quality in Adolescents' Self-Evaluation and Rumination after a Speech: Is it Contingent on Social Anxiety Level?

Background: Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has relatively poor outcomes for youth with social anxiety, possibly because broad-based CBT is not tailored to their specific needs. Treatment of social anxiety in youth may need to pay more attention to negative social cognitions that are considered a key factor in social anxiety development and maintenance.

Aims: The aim of the present study was to learn more about the role of performance quality in adolescents' cognitions about their social performance and, in particular, the moderating role social anxiety plays in the relationship between performance quality and self-cognitions.

Connecting the Dots between Schizotypal Symptoms and Social Anxiety in Youth with an Extra X Chromosome: A Mediating Role for Catastrophizing.

Youth with an extra X chromosome (47, XXY & 47, XXX) display higher levels of schizotypal symptoms and social anxiety as compared to typically developing youth. It is likely that the extra X chromosome group is at-risk for clinical levels of schizotypy and social anxiety. Hence, this study investigated how schizotypal and social anxiety symptoms are related and mechanisms that may explain their association in a group of 38 children and adolescents with an extra X chromosome and a comparison group of 109 typically developing peers (8-19 years).

Developmental pathways of social avoidance across adolescence: the role of social anxiety and negative cognition.

It is argued that the adolescent onset of social anxiety disorder (SAD) may be partly attributable to an increase in avoidance of social situations across this period. The current cohort-sequential study investigated developmental pathways of social avoidance in adolescence and examined the explanatory role of social anxiety and negative cognitive processes. A community sample of youth (9-21 years, N=331) participated in a four-wave study.

Adolescents' increasing stress response to social evaluation: pubertal effects on cortisol and alpha-amylase during public speaking.

Stress responses to social evaluation are thought to increase during adolescence, which may be due to pubertal maturation. However, empirical evidence is scarce. This study is the first to investigate the relation between pubertal development and biological responses to a social-evaluative stressor longitudinally.

The relation between social anxiety and audience perception: examining Clark and Wells' (1995) model among adolescents.

Background: Clark and Wells' cognitive model of social anxiety proposes that socially anxious individuals have negative expectations of performance prior to a social event, focus their attention predominantly on themselves and on their negative self-evaluations during an event, and use this negative self-processing to infer that other people are judging them harshly.

Aims: The present study tested these propositions.

Method: The study used a community sample of 161 adolescents aged 14-18 years.

Negative Social Cognitions in Socially Anxious Youth: Distorted Reality or a Kernel of Truth?

We review studies that investigate negative social cognitions of socially anxious youth in relation to two specific domains: interpretation of ambiguous social situations and self-evaluation of social performance, including social skills and nervous behaviors. In this review, we address the question whether socially anxious youth's negative perceptions are distortions of reality or reflect a kernel of truth as compared to other sources of information including independent adult observers and age peers. Studies key to this question are those that investigate not only the social perceptions themselves but also the social behavior of socially anxious youth.

Anger response styles in Chinese and Dutch children: a socio-cultural perspective on anger regulation.

In this study, we evaluated hypotheses about cultural convergence and divergence in the nature and correlates of anger expressions. With a sample of 141 11-year-olds from the Netherlands and Hong Kong, we first examined a broad range of strategies for responding to a provocateur, finding that both Chinese and Dutch children were more likely to use intrapersonal strategies (for coping internally with the angry feelings) than interpersonal responses (to communicate anger to the provocateur). No cultural divergence was shown in the overall extent to which anger would be verbally expressed, but differences became apparent when we asked children precisely what they would say to an aggressor in a hypothetical anger-eliciting situation.

Negative self-evaluations and the relation to performance level in socially anxious children and adolescents.

The current study investigated whether negatively biased self-evaluations of nervousness and social skills are related to how well an individual actually performs, that is performance level. Sixty-eight high socially anxious and 68 control participants (age range 9-17 years) gave a 5 min speech in front of a pre-recorded audience of same age peers and a teacher. Participants' evaluations immediately after the task were measured on a number of performance dimensions.

Peer perceptions of social skills in socially anxious and nonanxious adolescents.

Previous studies using adult observers are inconsistent with regard to social skills deficits in nonclinical socially anxious youth. The present study investigated whether same age peers perceive a lack of social skills in the socially anxious. Twenty high and 20 low socially anxious adolescents (13-17 years old) were recorded giving a 5-min speech.

A prepared speech in front of a pre-recorded audience: subjective, physiological, and neuroendocrine responses to the Leiden Public Speaking Task.

This study describes a new public speaking protocol for youth. The main question asked whether a speech prepared at home and given in front of a pre-recorded audience creates a condition of social-evaluative threat. Findings showed that, on average, this task elicits a moderate stress response in a community sample of 83 12- to 15-year-old adolescents.

The relation between public speaking anxiety and social anxiety: a review.

This article reviewed the literature on public speaking anxiety in the context of social phobia subtyping. In total, 18 empirical studies on subtype issues related to public speaking anxiety were analyzed. Results of the reviewed studies are discussed in relation to their research method, that is, whether it focused on qualitative or quantitative aspects of subtype differences and whether it used a clinical or community sample.

Interpretation bias and social anxiety in adolescents.

Interpretation bias, described as the tendency to interpret social situations in a negative or threatening manner, has been widely linked to social anxiety in adult populations. This study aimed to extend research on interpretation bias to an adolescent population. Thirty-seven high socially anxious and a control group of 36 non-socially anxious adolescents rated the likelihood of different interpretations of ambiguous social and non-social situations coming to mind and which interpretation they most believed.

The relation between anger coping strategies, anger mood and somatic complaints in children and adolescents.

Attempts to explain the experience of somatic complaints among children and adolescents suggest that they may in part result from the influence of particular strategies for coping with anger on the longevity of negative emotions. To explore these relationships British (n = 393) and Dutch (n = 299) children completed a modified version of the Behavioral Anger Response Questionnaire (BARQ), and two additional questionnaires assessing anger mood and somatic complaints. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that for both the UK and Dutch samples two coping styles, Social support-seeking and Rumination, made a significant contribution to somatic complaints, over and above the variance explained by anger mood.