The impact of social skills training for social anxiety disorder: a randomized controlled trial.

Objective: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) impacts social, occupational and academic functioning. Although many interventions report change in social distress, improvement in social behavior remains under-addressed. This investigation examined the additive impact of social skills training (SST) for the treatment of SAD.

Child-Report of Family Accommodation in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders: Comparison and Integration with Mother-Report.

Reducing family accommodation (FA) may be beneficial in cases of childhood anxiety disorders. Assessment of FA has so far relied on single-informant maternal report, which may be biased by factors including maternal anxiety. We compared child and mother reports of FA, and examined whether maternal anxiety moderates the association between mother and child report.

Social Skills and Social Acceptance in Children with Anxiety Disorders.

Whereas much is known about the deficits in social behaviors and social competence in youth with social anxiety disorder (SAD), less is known about those characteristics among youth with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). This study aimed to better elucidate the social repertoire and peer acceptance of youth with SAD and youth with GAD, relative to normal control (NC) youth. The sample consisted of 58 primarily Caucasian children, ages 6 to 13 years: 20 SAD (12 female), 18 GAD (12 female), and 20 NC (9 female).

Comparing family accommodation in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, and nonanxious children.

Background: Family accommodation describes ways in which parents modify their behavior to help a child avoid or alleviate distress caused by emotional disorders. Accommodation is associated with increased symptom severity, lower functioning, and poorer treatment outcomes. Accommodation is prevalent in childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety disorders (ADs) but no studies have compared accommodation in these groups or compared them to healthy controls to ascertain if accommodation is prevalent in the general population.

Children with generalized anxiety disorder do not have peer problems, just fewer friends.

A common assumption is that all youth with anxiety disorders (AD) experience impaired peer relationships relative to healthy control children. Social impairments have been identified among youth with certain AD (e.g.

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.

Social skills deficits and vocal characteristics of children with social phobia or Asperger's disorder: a comparative study.

Social skills deficits are commonly reported among children with social phobia (SP) and children with Asperger's Disorder (AD); however, a lack of direct comparison makes it unclear whether these groups, both of which endorse the presence of social anxiety, have similar or unique skills deficits. In this investigation, the social behaviors of children with SP (n=30) or AD (n=30) were compared to a typically developing (TD) peer group (n=30) during structured role play interactions. Data were analyzed using blinded observers' ratings of overt behaviors and digital vocal analysis of verbal communication.

Social skills and social phobia: an investigation of DSM-IV subtypes.

Social phobia is characterized as pervasive social timidity in social settings. Although much is known about this disorder, aspects of its clinical presentation remain unexplored, in particular characteristics that distinguish the generalized and non-generalized subtypes. For example, it remains unclear whether patients with the non-generalized subtype display social skills deficits in social interactions, and if so, are these deficits clinically, as well as statistically, significant? In this study, adults with either the non-generalized (NGSP; n=60) or generalized (GSP; n=119) subtype of social phobia and adults with no psychological disorder (n=200) completed an extensive behavioral assessment of social skill and social anxiety.