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

Westenberg, P. Michiel; Bokhorst, Caroline L.; Miers, Anne C.; Sumter, Sindy R.; Kallen, Victor; Pelt, Johannes van; Blöte, Anke W.

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.06.005

Cited by 115 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…(1997), Gordis et al (2006) and Yim et al (2010) all found an increase in cortisol; Dorn et al (2003) found no significant increase; and Westenberg et al (2009) only moderate responses.…”

Section: Cheetham and Turner-cobb Authors Final Submitted Versionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…In adult stress testing, participants perform in front of an adult panel yet in child stress testing peers have not been age matched, with the exception of work by Westenberg et al (2009) with adolescents. Performing in front of an adult panel has the potential to create a power dynamic in children that does not exist in adult testing.…”

Section: Cheetham and Turner-cobb Authors Final Submitted Versionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The use of a pre-recorded audience proved to be a successful adaptation for children, as in research with adolescents (Westenberg et al, 2009). The current study was conducted in an experimental setting and a mixed methods approach taken that provides a more complete picture of the impact of social stress testing.…”

Section: Strengths and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A pre-recorded audience was applied in the Leiden public speaking task with a panel of adolescents in a classroom setting, eliciting a moderate stress response in adolescents aged 12-15 years (Westenberg et al, 2009). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Panel manipulation in social stress testing: The Bath Experimental Stress Test for Children (BEST-C)

Cheetham

Turner‐Cobb

2016

Psychoneuroendocrinology

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SummaryBackground: Whilst acute stress paradigms in adults make use of adult panel members, similar paradigms modified for child participants have not manipulated the panel.Most work has utilised an audience of adult confederates, regardless of the age of the population being tested. The aim of this study was to trial a social stress test for children that provided a meaningful environment using age-matched child peers as panel actors.Methods: Thirty-three participants (7-11 years) underwent the Bath Experimental Stress Test for Children (BEST-C). Based on the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), it comprises a shortened six-minute public speaking task and four-minute maths challenge. It differs from previous stress tests by using age-matched children on the panel, pre-recorded and presented as a live feed, and includes an expanded manipulation check of subjective experience. Salivary cortisol was assessed at four time points, pre-post stress testing; life events, daily hassles and coping strategies were measured through questionnaires. A simple numerical coding scheme was applied to post-test interview data. Results:The BEST-C generated a typical stress and adaptation response in salivary cortisol (p=.032). Age and gender differences were observed during recovery. Cortisol responses mapped directly onto three distinct subjective response patterns: i) expected response and recovery; ii) expected response, no recovery; iii) no response. Conclusions:The BEST-C, utilising child confederates of participant target age is a meaningful social stress test for children. This is the first social stress test developed specifically for children that manipulates panel characteristics by using child confederates and a pre-recorded sham panel. Greater cortisol responses to the test were also found to match subjective verbal accounts of the experience. It offers a meaningful acute stress paradigm with potential applications to other child and adolescent age groups. Furthermore, it leads the way in the use of panel manipulation in social stress testing.

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“…(1997), Gordis et al (2006) and Yim et al (2010) all found an increase in cortisol; Dorn et al (2003) found no significant increase; and Westenberg et al (2009) only moderate responses.…”

Section: Cheetham and Turner-cobb Authors Final Submitted Versionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Cheetham and Turner-cobb Authors Final Submitted Versionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strengths and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Panel manipulation in social stress testing: The Bath Experimental Stress Test for Children (BEST-C)

Cheetham

Turner‐Cobb

2016

Psychoneuroendocrinology

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“…The SAND study included two administrations of the Leiden Public Speaking Task (LPST; Westenberg et al, 2009) over a two-year interval and concurrent assessments of pubertal development and recursive thinking. Two previous longitudinal studies were based on data from the same sample.…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of adolescent sociocognitive development on the cortisol response to social evaluation.

Bos¹,

Duijvenvoorde²,

Westenberg³

2016

Developmental Psychology

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Adolescents become increasingly sensitive to social evaluation. Some previous studies have related this change to pubertal development. The present longitudinal study examined the role of sociocognitive development. We investigated whether or not the transition to recursive thinking, the ability to think about (others’) thoughts, would be associated with changes in the magnitude and timing of the cortisol response to social evaluation. Salivary cortisol was obtained during the Leiden Public Speaking Task. The task was administered twice with a 2-year interval to 221 participants, aged 9–17 years at Time 1. The area under the curve was computed to assess the magnitude of the overall cortisol response. Two difference scores, reflecting speech anticipation and speech delivery, were computed to assess the timing of the cortisol response. Recursive thinking was measured with a cartoon description task. Regression analyses with clustered bootstrap controlling for pubertal development, age, and general cognitive functioning showed that the transition to recursive thinking predicted an increase in the cortisol response to speech anticipation, but was unrelated to the magnitude of the overall cortisol response. This is in line with the view that increasing sensitivity to social evaluation in adolescence is mainly due to the effects of pubertal hormones on affective regions of the brain. Sociocognitive development affected the timing rather than the magnitude of the cortisol response. The results suggest that recursive thinking enables earlier realization of social-evaluative threat.

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The social learning of threat and safety in the family: Parent‐to‐child transmission of social fears via verbal information

Aktar

Nimphy

Bockstaele

et al. 2022

Developmental Psychobiology

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Parental verbal threat (vs. safety) information regarding the social world may impact a child's fear responses, evident in subjective, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological indices of fear. In this study, primary caregivers provided standardized verbal threat or safety information to their child (N = 68, M = 5.27 years; 34 girls) regarding two strangers in the lab. Following this manipulation, children reported fear beliefs for each stranger. Physiological and behavioral reactions were recorded as children engaged with the two strangers (who were blind to their characterization) in a social interaction task. Child attention to the strangers was measured in a visual search task. Parents also reported their own, and their child's, social anxiety symptoms. Children reported more fear for the stranger paired with threat information, but no significant differences were found in observed child fear, attention, or heart rate. Higher social anxiety symptoms on the side of the parents and the children exacerbated the effect of parental verbal threat on observed fear. Our findings reveal a causal influence of parental verbal threat information only for child-reported fear and highlight the need to further refine the conditions under which acquired fear beliefs persist and generalize to behavior/physiology or get overruled by nonaversive real-life encounters.

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

Cited by 115 publications

References 43 publications

Panel manipulation in social stress testing: The Bath Experimental Stress Test for Children (BEST-C)

Panel manipulation in social stress testing: The Bath Experimental Stress Test for Children (BEST-C)

Effects of adolescent sociocognitive development on the cortisol response to social evaluation.

The social learning of threat and safety in the family: Parent‐to‐child transmission of social fears via verbal information

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